


FRUITPUNCHED

by razbliuto



Series: Heart Alchemist (Her Bombastic Materials) [2]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Friendship, Humor, Multi, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-23 11:08:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 57,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21319201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/razbliuto/pseuds/razbliuto
Summary: A messy assortment of various fruit-flavored candies. — Law/OC, OC/multiple; Methyl Nitrate Pineapples softdrink collection
Relationships: Portgas D. Ace/Original Character(s), Sabo (One Piece)/Original Character(s), Trafalgar D. Water Law/Original Character(s)
Series: Heart Alchemist (Her Bombastic Materials) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1996723
Comments: 69
Kudos: 144
Collections: Nothing But that Good Shit Here





	1. highschool au: part i

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's all fun (strict rules) and games (turning in delinquents) until he catches you smoking on the school roof.

.

.

.

a comprehensive corpus of the **hazards** of smoking while class representative  
(part i)

—

I: THE WORST GUYS

—

Despite attending a high school whose motto should seriously be 'Sic Semper Troublemakers', Sophie would like you to know that she takes her job as class 2-3's representative _very_ seriously, thank you very much and also_ get out of her way_. Between hormonal teenagers trying to get it on in the gymnasium storage closet, May midterms, and the delinquents who've been setting fire to the school roof, she's got enough to deal with, _capiche_?

Don't get her wrong, she's proud to be attending this institution. Her high school has a long and storied history, with a staggering list of distinguished alumni—there's a daughter of an Egyptian ambassador and several corporate heiresses attending, no less—but colloquially, they're known as Hell School.

(Or Gakuen Shitshow, or School Where You're Most Likely to Get Your Arms Chopped Off. There's a good variety of nicknames.)

Where to begin?

Bartolomeo, who swaggers around with his gang who all wear tacky motorcycle gangster coats instead of school uniforms. Cavendish, whose fanclub could destabilize a national currency to get dick pics. Bonney, who masterminded stealing all the food out of the school kitchens for a week (this now lives infamously as The Week of Hungry Mayhem, featuring three pizza delivery boys tied up as hostages, two separate fake bomb threats, six overturned delivery cars, and three burglarized convenience stores).

Kidd and Killer, who've gotten arrested for fleeing police officers, aggravated vehicular assault, and noise disturbance. It's the noise disturbance that's particularly concerning—Kidd is _loud_. Sophie has to drag over a chair, stand on it, and bellow _please turn in your homework_ over his head before he acknowledges her existence. This is typically followed by him kicking the chair over with her still on it.

Then… there are the Monkeys.

(This is what Sophie calls a band of three brothers who everyone else refers to by their _initials_. Can you imagine? Like they're some famous rockstar boyband! Revolting.)

The student council (Tashigi, president and captain of the kendo team, Koby, Helmeppo) are often the first to step in when trouble occurs. Sophie inevitably follows because the other class representatives are—how to put this delicately—_pansies_.

It takes a combined effort of her, Koby (who grabs Luffy by the waist and proceeds to be no help whatsoever as he gets dragged along, screaming), Tashigi (who becomes distracted by Zoro and descends into a shouting match with him—which begins _another fight_, jesus huckleberry christ!), and Helmeppo (who gets beamed in the face by a dry-erase marker and begins threatening lawsuit).

So, yeah. It's really just her.

And it's even harder disciplining them, because they're infuriatingly invulnerable to her angriest eyebrows. They stand before her in a line, shirts ripped, hair disheveled, cheerfully bruised.

The oldest interrupts her yelling with remarks about her footwork and shows her how to punch better, which wasn't even the _point_, the middle brother will only ever smile politely and assure her she's doing great ("Don't _patronize_ me, Sabo." "Atta girl! Keep up the good work!"), and the youngest is a beaming ball of sunshine with off-the-wall goofiness that she in no way finds charming _at all_.

They are _definitely_ the worst. That's it. End of the list. End of story.

…Well.

Except for the guy in her class.

The guy. The _guy_. Sophie knows his name, but refuses to let her internal monologue say it for the sake of… decorum! Or something.

He is _The Worst_.

**Exhibit A**: Last year, he tried to start a business where students paid him to kill them before exams.

(Because you technically can't fail if you're dead.)

Sure, all he did was stab a few guys in the arm with a switchblade, and there were a couple broken pinkies involved. She still took him behind the school and yelled for three hours while chucking empty water bottles at him. Yes, she got her ammo by digging through recycling bins like a gremlin. But what other choice did she have? He sent kids to the hospital and then tried to argue it was a legal exchange of services!

**Exhibit B**: He hangs out with the other delinquents.

Specifically, Kidd and Luffy. Sometimes they act like they hate each other, sometimes they team up to wreak havoc like some kind of Gang Trifecta. When all three of those boys are together, danger's brewing.

**Exhibit C**: He routinely skips class.

And it would be so nice to forget his existence, but then he comes to school after a week of absences, his rumpled shirt untucked and his tie half-made, and aces the exam she spent the whole month studying for.

Sitting at the front of the classroom, she sneaks glances over her shoulder, glaring at his lazy posture, the indolent turn of his head as he watches the trees outside sway. These days, their interactions have been largely limited to Sophie pelting him with chalk when she catches him lazing around with a book instead of taking part in afterschool cleaning duty.

But someone has to teach this guy a lesson.

She finds him slouching behind the school, evading gym class. When he spots her, he flicks something in the bushes.

Tobacco in the air. Sophie zeroes in like a bloodhound.

"Class rep," he greets, his voice thick with sarcasm. Trafalgar Law can drop the self-esteem of a rock through eye contact.

But Sophie's sheer obstinacy is far denser than that of a rock's. "Where is it, delinquent?"

He shrugs, running his hand through messy black hair. There's something shifty and sort of awkward about him, his lanky body covered by a shapeless jacket like he's hiding something other than rangy shoulders and an aversion to combs.

She stuffs her hand—rather brazenly, perhaps a smidge _too_ brazenly—right into the pocket of his jacket that's perhaps a tad too close to certain other things as well. He flinches at her sudden invasion of personal bubble, eyes twitching in surprise.

"Keep feeling me up and I'll start getting ideas," he tells her.

"Confiscated," she snaps, waving a half-empty pack of cigarettes in front of his face. Her triumph is ruined by the fact that now she has to pretend she's not angrily blushing. "Detention for the rest of this week, Trafalgar. That's going on your permanent record."

**Exhibit D**: Along with _death_ on the knuckles and an ugly smiley face on the back of his hand, he also has _fuck you_ tattooed down his middle finger.

It's obnoxious.

Especially if you're on the receiving end.

—

II: DEMON DAYS

—

Sophie begins her morning as she begins all mornings: at sunrise, splashing her face with cold water, then heads downstairs to make breakfast and bentos for her and dad, who she has to wake up in precisely twenty-five minutes for him to make it to his hospital shift.

It's a half-hour subway ride to school—she listens to the Vienna Philharmonic on her earbuds, squeezed between sleepy salarymen heading to work—and she's the first one in the classroom and can catch up on studying in peace, before students come trickling in. The soccer and baseball teams are doing morning training—from the window, she spies Sanji and Sabo out on their fields, center forward and clutch hitter respectively.

School starts and as she goes through class announcements, she also has to explain why it's not good to overfeed the class hamster, and also they're not allowed to have a class hamster so whoever brought it in needs to take it back home, for the love of god.

A tattooed hand in the back of the class offers to take it. Sophie says no, because Law is obviously going to kill the hamster, which prompts Perona to turn in her seat, smacking her gum, and say, "Oi, psycho, can I get the dead body? I'm working on a theory to bring ghosts back to living plane."

Sophie takes a deep breath. "How's that coming along?"

"Great. I talked to Einstein the other day and he said he was proud of me. And that I'm, like, way cuter than him."

The week continues ruthlessly. Same routine, extra caffeine.

Splashing ice-cold water on her face. The rice cooker chimes. Natto porridge for breakfast today. Don't forget your bento, Dad. Subway doors closing. The sway of dozing salarymen. Class rep, reporting for duty. The _hiss_ of the coffeepot. Textbooks opening, pages flipping. Splashing ice-cold water on her face. Yelling at dad because they both slept through their alarms. No time for breakfast. Sizzling fried chicken from the convenience store. Dashing to cram school. Jerking awake in the middle of the night, drool on her textbook, paper coffee cups tumbling off her desk. Splashing ice-cold water on her face.

The pressure builds. And builds. And builds.

She's in line at the school bakery for the third time in a day. Behind the counter, Pudding drops her cutesy-tootsy act when she sees Sophie (it worked for the first couple of months, before she saw Pudding throw a knife at a songbird nesting over the bakery window).

"Espresso," she says, taking out her wallet. "Just espresso. Please."

In a bored tone, Pudding says she has to say the school legally can't be held responsible if Sophie dies. Which is fine.

Vibrating onto a plane of higher existence, Sophie aces her quizzes, tutors nervous first-years in chemistry, and runs her fastest mile yet in gym. During cram school, she raises her hand and asks smart, articulate questions. In student government meetings, Tashigi praises her punctuality and deft organizational skills. Sophie smiles radiantly, head held high, because she can do anything.

Completely unrelated: she's going to drop dead at any moment.

She's eating lunch and studying calculus when the numbers begin to ooze away and her brain turns into jelly and _wow_ if she looks at one more equation, she'll launch her textbook out the window and then herself. Why hasn't anyone invented a way to shoot up motivation straight into your veins?

…Right, that's called cocaine and she probably shouldn't do that on school grounds.

She riffles through her school bag. _Yes_, there it is—a half-empty packet of cigarettes in her bag that she confiscated from… Ah, see, she told the teachers she would throw it out and then never did. But maybe there was a reason for that.

A divine reason.

_Fate, _perhaps.

Look, she survived the Adderall addiction phase of her childhood. And she can quit smoking anytime. Truth is, most days she'll come to school with a cigarette and lighter hidden in her pencil case and sneak a quick smoke on the roof between classes. But she's different from the delinquents who smoke—she actually _needs_ the nicotine rush in the middle of school, cram school, studying for school, and dreams about failing school.

Slipping the contraband in her pocket, she fast-walks to the rooftop (lecturing three students along the way for indecent skirt length and yelling at one couple who's getting _handsy_). There's a group of girls playing volleyball at the north end, a loud blond interrupting them with baked sweets and heart eyes, and more students scattered around eating lunch.

Making sure not to be seen, she sneaks into an empty corner, a good distance away from the student population.

The first inhale is a relief.

Sophie leans her head back against the wall, exhaling a river of pure joy, eyes closed.

They rip open a second later when a volleyball comes bouncing by. A distant voice shouts, "Your prince will retrieve it, my angels!"

She shuffles around the shadowed corner. She tucks her skirt back under her legs, careful not to get it dirty, sitting on her haunches. She takes another deep inhale and rests her elbows on her knees, looking out past the school grounds at the cars rumbling through the tree-lined street.

Then her gaze wanders to the side.

And.

Her brain.

Stops.

Trafalgar Law and his band of delinquents are staring back at her.

Her, the straight-laced, ideal student who neatly steams her uniform every night to avoid creases, who is in the middle of smoking a cigarette with her skirt bunched up around her legs, her hair in bedraggled tangles around her face and her eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep.

He's got a cigarette in his hand as well, which is hilarious in a _kill-me_ sort of way, and he doesn't even put it down.

Shachi breaks the silence. "Huh. Didn't class rep give you detention last week for smoking?"

_This isn't mine. I have no idea how this cigarette got in my hand. I have no idea what cigarettes are. Who switched my innocent cherry lollipop with a cigarette!?_ Sophie tries to come up with an explanation in the most rational voice she's capable of feigning at the moment. She ends up choking out the remaining smoke in her lungs and gets spittle all over her chin.

A bright flash. He's holding up his phone.

Her numb fingers drop the cigarette. She gets to her feet, slapping ash off her skirt. "Wait, wait—"

He motions for Shachi and Penguin to stand watch, then walks her up against the chain-link fence. She stumbles against it, the metal digging into the back of her shins.

"It was a moment of weakness," she says.

"Right."

"I've a-actually never smoked a cigarette before in my life."

One hand slams the fence beside her head, gripping the metal rings. "Yeah. Except for, you know. What just happened."

He sounds pissed. Which some might say he has every right to be, but let's be clear that _she _is the real victim here. To her credit, Sophie is doing rather good at looking unbothered. She clears her throat, busying herself with her bangs.

His eyes flick down to the packet crushed in her sweaty fingers. Incredulous eyebrows raise. "…Are those my cigarettes?"

"I'll pay you back."

"Keep it. It's a nice smell on you." He leans in close. "Smells like… hypocrisy and shame."

She shoves him. Trafalgar Law is not all skin and bones under his baggy jacket, because he barely moves.

"Underage smoking, class rep? Don't you know that can go on your permanent record?" He shakes the fence, making her wince. "Can you imagine what'll happen if this gets out online? A model student, smoking? What's next? Rumors about you blowing a teacher to get your grades?"

She hates his voice, for the record. She hates how the low, guttural sound contorts around _record_ and _smoking_ and _blow_.

"What," she says through clenched teeth, "do you want."

He tilts his head. "Don't know. I'll have to think about it."

"I'll tutor you."

"We get the same grades."

Damn him for being smart and also right. "I'll—I'll g-give you money. I'll do all your homework for the rest of the year. I—I don't know! What do you_ want_?"

He says, "Let's trade LINE info."

As lunch ends, she sprints for the girl's bathroom, has a super quick, super chill mental breakdown by crying silently while hitting herself in the head, cleans herself up, and renames him The Worst on her phone.

In history, the teacher drones on about some war in some century of some whatever. Sophie plays with her pen, tapping it against her book, pulling it apart and screwing it all back on again, nervously flicking the plastic clip harder and harder until she puts so much pressure on it that it snaps off.

She quickly bends down to pick it up and replaces it with a pencil. The whole time, she feels a gaze resting along the back of her head, tracing the length of her neck.

She turns around in lieu of checking the clock, and their eyes meet. He's slouched over his desk, dark eyes half-hidden under pitchblack hair. When he catches her gaze, he raises his chin up from his elbows.

He does it so she can see his grin.

Sophie whips her head back around. She rests her hand on the back of her hot neck, feeling the beads of sweat that have accumulated under her collar, and presses on her pencil so hard the lead breaks off.

When school ends, he doesn't talk to her on his way out the door. She goes off to a student gov meeting. For a moment, everything's normal.

Then her phone chimes with a message.

**The Worst** (5:43pm)  
_send a pic_

In a half-second with the _dotdotdot _still loading, she imagines the most disreputable, perverse things a class representative has no business imagining. Her heart stops, then races furiously. She's going straight to the police, let's see what Trafalgar Law can do when they bust down his door for soliciting underage photos of—

**The Worst** (5:43pm)  
_of the back of your ear_

She stares.

**Sophie** (5:47pm)  
_Is this some kind of joke?_

(More importantly, is this some kind of _fetish_?)

No response. Only a _read_ checkmark.

She runs to the girl's bathroom and hides in a stall, breathing deep. She combs back her curls behind one ear—then pauses, digs out a pen from her bag, and scribbles on her neck before opening her phone's camera. She tries to get the photo in the ugliest light possible.

When she leaves the stall, she pauses upon catching a glimpse of her reflection. Her infuriated tears, the nervous sheen of sweat on her brow, the swollen lips where she chewed anxiously, the band-aid she slapped on her neck that looks conspicuously out of place so she takes off her ponytail and brushes her sun-bleached-yellow hair over it.

She takes the subway home, tapping her feet restlessly, looking down at the tiny _read_ on the bottom of her close-up photo with a _suck a_ (insert bad drawing of a banana) scrawled angrily behind her ear. It nearly gives her a heart attack when he finally responds.

_eating banana right now n thinking of you_

She whips out a reply faster than a blink. _You disgust me. Sicko. I hope you choke._

…

…

…

He replies, _:)_

—

The unfortunate part of drowning in schoolwork, class rep duties, and making sure your dad doesn't get alcohol poisoning when he stumbles in from a late-night drinking party with his friends, is that there is just no time to plot the perfect revenge blackmail.

She hopes he'll be hit with one of his lethargic weeks and not show up to class.

That hope is quickly dashed when messy black hair and piercings slink through the door right before homeroom begins. He skulks to his seat at the back of class and rests his chin on his elbows.

Sophie takes off her ponytail and brushes her hair over her ears, hiding her face. This is fine. If you can't see him, he can't see you, right?

(Wrong.

But.

It helps thinking optimistically.)

During break, Sophie wets her fingers under the bathroom sink and combs it through her thick hair. She's never worn her hair down in school before. It falls over her shoulders in stringy curls and looks… well. _Rough_.

"Trying to channel Sadako, class rep?" Perona comments while fixing her eyeliner. "I can help."

"You look fine," says Koala, who Sophie regards suspiciously because she's friends with a _Monkey Brother_—but she's also one of the friendliest students in school, if you ignore the rumors of her being part of some underground political youth resistance.

"Oh, please. You don't have to say that," Nami scoffs; another bright, popular student, but Sophie's also seen her bully money out of teachers. Nami pats her on the arm. "I'll come by during lunch and fix your hair, poor thing."

"Beauty is a manmade construct," she replies, which is something she's quite used to telling herself in the mirror.

"Yeah, but it looks like you have some day-old gum in there, and that's really gross."

True to her word, Nami drags Sophie into the infamously rowdy class 2-1. She sits her down in her seat and goes to work detangling her hair.

Nami's surrounded by her friends, which means Sophie's surrounded by Nami's friends, which means she's forced to endure Zoro and Sanji snarling at each other (do they hate each other or do they want to take each other's clothes off? a question for the ages), Luffy scarfing down food while sitting barefoot on his desk, Usopp making a paper-mâché out of what looks like the entire class's failed quizzes, and even third years like Robin and Franky are visiting with their lunches.

Ace and Sabo are balling up old homework and shooting it into wastebaskets. Kidd is in a deep discussion about computer engines with Franky. Half of the students crammed in 2-1 aren't even in the class. This is a fire hazard.

Naturally, the door slides open with more visitors.

"Traffy!" Luffy hollers. "Get your ass over here!"

"You're noisy as all fuck, you know that?"

Sophie cracks open Nami's calculus textbook and proceeds to be immensely fascinated by a picture of a sphere.

Law joins the group with Shachi and Penguin, and Luffy starts a loud discussion about meeting up at the arcade after school. Sophie can't listen to it. They call each other _bro _and talk about the new movies coming out and _ugh,_ it sounds so awful having friends who don't listen to nightly podcasts about the recent scientific discoveries of nitrogen pollution in salt marshes.

"_Ow_!"

Sophie turns pink at the yelp that just escaped her mouth, determinedly staring at the book. She feels the weight of his gaze drilling into her skull.

"Usopp, help me." Nami raises her hand as Sanji eagerly opens his mouth. "No, not you."

"Yes, the Great Usopp at your service! Wet brush, curly hair, always works." He tries that method on her tangles. "Yeesh, I take that back. It'll be easier to cut it. Do you mind?"

"I refuse to conform to society's patriarchal and colonial standards of beauty." That's why she'll never pluck her bushy eyebrows either. Usopp looks at her nervously. Sophie clarifies, "I don't care."

"Zoro, pass me a blade—"

"Use mine."

She stiffens at the voice. Usopp flicks it open and the sharp metal cuts through her tangles. She wonders if he's used the same switchblade running through her hair to stab organs. It seems likely.

Nami throws the switchblade back at its owner, mercifully shielding Sophie. "Five thousand yen to look at a cute girl, buddy."

"Nothing to look at," Law retorts. He turns back to his group of degenerates, taking out his phone.

"Thank you, Nami," Sophie says formally. "As young women, we will not be objectified by or beholden to the male gaze."

"Uh-huh. That'll be ten thousand yen."

"…Eh?"

"My skills are expensive. If you can't pay me now, I'll consider this a debt." Nami winks. "With interest, of course."

"Eh? Eh? B-but—"

Her phone buzzes in her pocket. Leaving Nami to cheerfully write the owed payment in an ominously thick black notebook, Sophie reads the new message.

**The Worst** (10:21am)  
_looks nice :)_

She glances up. He's snarking back at something Zoro says, completely ignoring her. Unbelievable.

**Sophie** (10:22am)  
_Shut up. I'll kill you._

She makes furious eye contact with him as she leaves the classroom, promising an afterlife filled with agony.

In response, his mouth twitches.

She has a new routine now.

She writes down Law, Penguin, and Shachi's requested snacks, buys them at the convenience store, and throws it in their lap on the rooftop at lunch. It's too tiresome to find another place to eat, so she unwraps her own lunch and sits three feet away from them.

Until she sees them staring. "…What."

"Trade," the three boys reply.

She ends up eating her own store-bought food while they devour her homemade bento, passing the chopsticks amongst each other.

When Law comes in late with his tie undone _yet again_, she grinds her teeth to keep herself from berating him. When he waits for her to walk by and shows her the petri dish with a dissected frog he cooked on a Bunsen burner, she looks away.

In grade school, her dad suggested she turn her nervous tapping habit into an outlet for something creative. He meant ballet or piano, but Sophie quit both after ending her classes in panicked meltdowns because she was surrounded by tiny, perfect ballerina piano girls and if she isn't also perfect_ then she's the worst_.

This is all to say that at three in the morning, she's still banging on her drum set in her tiny soundproof studio, slamming the snare and screaming.

—

She's walking out of school when he comes up to her on a beat-up bicycle with dented handlebars.

"Get on," he says, jerking his head at his bike.

"_Not in front of people_," she hisses, glancing around.

He looks to the sky. "Jesus fucking Fuck."

Sophie marches out the school entrance. He meets her around the corner, then takes off as soon as she rearranges her skirt and sits down. She lurches forward and wraps her arms around him, hiding her face in case any students recognize her, and demands him to bike faster. Law glances at the mortified girl tucking her face into the general region of his armpit and does as requested.

"Hold tight," he tells her, as the train crossing at the bottom of the hill starts clanging.

"What—wait, _what are you doing_?"

He takes his feet off the pedals. They're hurtling down the slope, trees and students and buildings blurring past her eyes. She _screams_, her fingers splayed across his shirt and digging into the buttons. She is so stupid for trusting him on a thing with wheels! He's going to kill them both!

They clear the lowering bars, the tracks, the speeding train that's blasting _AWWOOOOOO_, and tear through a sidewalk of shrieking students and honking cars. He's laughing as she clings to him, breathless, pressing herself so tight against him she can feel every slope and ridge of his back and his pounding heart against her cheek.

He slows down and breaks, looking over his shoulder with a smile of ineffable arrogance.

Sophie balls her hand into a fist and punches him between the shoulders.

"A little harder, I have a tight muscle there."

"_Are you crazy_? We could have _died_—!"

"Get me a tuna onigiri and a coffee," he interrupts, nodding at the convenience store they're parked in front of.

With an incensed huff, Sophie gets up and aims a kick at his bicycle. She is definitely going to spit in his coffee.

A recognizable face is working the cash register, wearing a blue smock with a 'Ask Me for Help!' button pinned to his chest. She stares at Kidd. Kidd gives her the finger and barks at her to go buy something. Killer is restocking the shelves, quietly nodding at her as she scoots behind him.

She hurries to the onigiri section, rearranging the little sandwiches and microwavable noodle bowls on her way there. While reaching for the tuna mayo, she nearly jumps out of her own skin and drops the onigiri.

Law catches it. He's standing just behind her. "Making sure you don't spit in my coffee," he explains.

"I would never." Her plans are thwarted. She hates him.

"Asshole," Kidd greets as they reach the check-out. "Class rep."

Sophie waits for Law to pull out his wallet. Law sticks his hands in his pockets. Kidd looks at both of them, nonexistent eyebrows climbing higher and higher.

Is he expecting her to pay? Her, an upstanding member of society who just wants what's best for the world?

…Yes, yes he is.

Sophie slaps the money on the counter. "I'm buying this for myself," she tells Kidd. "And I would like no further questions."

Law downs his coffee in a minute, then bikes to the nearby station with one hand, the other holding his tuna onigiri as he eats. "Heading to cram school, class rep?"

She answers unwillingly, "Yes."

"Do you ever not study?"

"Some people actually have to work hard to get good grades."

He stops at a red light. "For what? A job at a boring company where you'll work nine-to-five until you hit your late-twenties and find a tolerable dick and have babies and die? Sounds like a fuckin' A plan."

"Sure," she says. "Let's say that's my dream. But you missed the part where I'm a Nobel Laureate. And the part where I'm the youngest person to ever win a Nobel Prize in chemistry. And the part where young girls read about me in history books and are inspired to go into STEM. Maybe you hate that, too, but it's better than dying as a burnout who's so smart he never does anything with his life."

He picks at the chipped black nail polish on his fingers. "I like this burnout character. Who's he based on?"

"I'm so tempted to throw us into oncoming traffic right now."

He drops her off at the crowded station. It's already commuter's rush. She gets off his bike, about to run inside.

"Hey," he calls after her, "don't get harassed by any creeps."

…There are _no words_ for the level of outrage in her glare.

"Other than me," he adds, kicking up the brake. "I don't like sharing."

What an actual pile of turd.

On the train, her phone buzzes. Sophie looks down with expectant dread.

**The Worst** (6:02pm)  
_pic. ankle._

That is definitely a fetish.

She quickly takes a snap of her right ankle (modestly covered by knee-high socks). It comes out blurry, which is excellent. Sophie sends it with a long paragraph of knife emojis, because she wants to be extra clear about her reaction in more ideal circumstances.

**The Worst** (6:05pm)  
_:)_ _:)_ _:)_

His usage of smilies makes her want to snap her phone in half and stuff them down his throat.

She takes a clandestine hit of nicotine before heading into cram school. Then it's another three hours of biology and chemistry lectures.

**The Worst** (7:23pm)  
_hope you're cramming yourself with something useful [video attached]_

During a ten-minute break, she slips on her headphones and plays the video. They're skating around in a city park, him and shadowy boys that she can tell by the indistinct sunset light are Penguin and Shachi and Luffy's gang. He crouches down low and leaps off a flight of cement stairs—Sophie inhales out of reflex—and sticks the landing with ease at the bottom, skidding around as the handheld video shakes and the boys erupt in grainy hollers._ "You catch that?"_ he calls, kicking up his skateboard, and the video cuts off.

How is it that she spends so much time on her studies? Meanwhile, _he_ can go gallivanting around with his delinquent friends at all odd hours of the night and still get grades good enough to match hers?

It infuriates her so much that she spends the rest of the night alternating between studying and hate-watching the video until she falls asleep.

—

During a marathon of midterms studying during Golden Week, Law sends her a photo of how he's spending his vacation. A towering hamburger the size of a small child, Penguin and Shachi grinning across the table. _Ate this under ten minutes and got it for free_, he texts, because he wants to torture her.

She takes a smoke break, spinning around in her chair and staring at the photo, then replies, _You're bothersome and you should be studying and/or punched in the teeth._

He texts her if she's studying (duh), where (her room, duh again), then: _show me_.

With an irritated sigh, she takes a photo of her desk: lamp, textbooks neatly laid out, old polaroids hanging on the wall, and a color-coded collection of stationery that she's been growing ever since she was eight. Notebooks, post-its, pens, cute washi tape, erasers shaped like fruit.

**The Worst** (11:40pm)  
_wow, how organized_

**The Worst** (11:41pm)  
_make a mess and send a photo_

**Sophie** (11:41pm)  
_Ha ha ha._

**Sophie** (11:41pm)  
_Are you serious?_

**Sophie** (11:41pm)  
_No. I'm not doing that._

**Sophie** (11:42pm)  
_Hello?_

**Sophie** (11:42pm)  
_HELLO?_

**Sophie** (11:43pm)  
_ARE YOU AN ACTUAL SADIST?_

**Sophie** (11:43pm)  
_WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?_

**Sophie** (11:43pm)  
_WHO HURT YOU?_

…

**Sophie** (11:49pm)  
_[photo attached]_

It's in the middle of midterms week that she realizes he's been leaving her alone. No texts, no photos, nothing. She passes her classes with flying colors and ends up in the top ten on the student rankings. (Rudely, _he's_ also there.)

When Tashigi finds her during break and catches her up with student government events, Law comes ambling along and looks at the exam sitting on her desk. He now thinks he can just _walk up_ to her whenever he feels like it.

He flips it over to look at her score. "Top marks. Impressive."

"And you?" Sophie asks snidely, grabbing his test from his hand before he can say. She finds the only red circle on the page and gapes. "…You got points off because you didn't write your name."

"We have a broken education system," he says.

"I discover new ways to hate you every day."

"Sophie!" Tashigi looks startled, having never heard her sound so bitter before.

"What a foul mouth." He pats the back of her chair, the _thump_ shuddering down her spine. "Dirtier than tobacco."

In the girl's bathroom, she takes furious puffs from a cigarette and promises herself she's going to ignore him. And she does. She ignores him in chem, and his texts during lunch, and gym.

Which is especially hard because today they're playing against class 2-1 in basketball.

Law barely tries in gym class. He's always the last one walking around the track instead of running, and sometimes he'll slip away and sleep on the field with his jacket over his face. But today's a rare exception: at first he's too lazy to make a real effort, so he stays near the back and sinks three-pointers until the other team wises up and Nami orders Luffy and Zoro to start chasing him around. Then it's havoc.

Now deep in the game, the boys start going shirtless as students on the sidelines whistle and holler. Except for him. His shirt is soaked in sweat, front and back. He rarely takes off his jacket during school, but when he does, the tattoos running down his arms and hands are plenty visible as he dribbles the basketball between his legs.

"This sport is so unrefined," Perona sighs, then yells at Zoro when he comes sprinting by, "Nice pecs, ogre!"

"_Shut up_!" Zoro hollers back.

A few girls start shrieking when Cavendish does a fancy layup. He lands with a rose between his teeth that wasn't there before he jumped. The girls start screaming louder when Tashigi makes a dunk over the boys' heads. Her shirt flares up and shows off her rock-solid six pack. This leads to a domino effect of womanly fainting that Sophie would've gladly been a part of, except her gaze is still following the dark-haired slacker grabbing a water bottle sitting abandoned on the ground.

He pours the rest of it over his head and slicks back his hair, doused in water and sweat, with a shirt that's now translucent and clinging to his ribcage. Then, from across the court, he meets her gaze.

Sophie turns around so abruptly she almost walks into the wall.

After class, she stays behind to pick up basketballs. She pauses outside the door to the gym storage room, sighs heavily, and knocks. "I'm opening the door in ten seconds. Please have all your clothes on by then."

A burst of whispering behind the door, then the rustle of fabric. Vivi hurries out, blushing to the roots of her blue hair.

"You owe me," reminds Nami as she slinks out in a much more languid pace, buttoning up her shirt.

Sophie needs another smoke. "Not on school grounds. Please. It's unhygienic."

"Killjoy."

—

III: SHE BLOWS MY AMPLIFIER

—

It's Saturday, which means it's the perfect time for him to text, _meet me on the yamanote line at 5. pic of your pinky toe_.

(No one can tell her that isn't a fetish.)

Sophie sets down her drum sticks, sticks out her foot for a photoshoot, and throws on the first thing she sees. Whatever this stupid thing is, hopefully she can leave quickly.

Law meets her at the station. On the train, he does the Polite Manly Thing and stands in front of her, her back to the wall, shielding her from the rest of the packed compartment. He… smells good. Wait, is it him or his raggedy band tee? She takes another surreptitious sniff. Is it weird to ask your blackmailer what fabric softener he uses?

She sniffs again, then realizes that he's watching her with an amused expression. The train jerks roughly. He catches her, hand on the skin of her stomach between where her small hoodie ended and where her overalls buttoned up.

She shoves his hand away. "Just so you know, I have pepper spray hidden on my person so I'm prepared to make you cry at any time."

He brings her to an arcade downtown. Sophie almost has a heart attack when she sees the crowd of high schoolers—Luffy's gang, Shachi and Penguin, Koala, Sabo, Ace—_oh, no_. She looks like she just rolled out of bed. She looks like she makes no effort in her life outside of school, which even though it's true, doesn't make it less humiliating!

It's too late to run away; they're already spotted. She _hates_ him.

She shuffles after Law as he's greeted by his friends, and manages a tentative wave as they blink at her over his shoulder.

"What's this I spy? A golden rose gracing us with her presence?" Sanji flutters, then clears his throat and says in a deep voice, "Mademoiselle, looking at you is like gazing upon the light of a distant star."

As Nami rescues her, Sophie whispers, "I've always wanted to know, is Sanji the type of guy who hates knowing that a girl farts?"

"Oh, Sanji-kun would never call it farting. He calls it daisy perfume."

"That's… so much worse."

They're celebrating the end of midterms. There's a sweet-faced freshman named Chopper, and three third-years: the mysterious Robin, her cola-slinging, racecar-building beefcake boyfriend, and Brook, a violinist in band with a killer 'fro.

Sophie pretends to be immersed in watching Zoro and Usopp play a racing game. She's half-heartedly listening to the jokes coming from the friend group behind her, until Nami says, "Law, you've been coming to school a lot more often. You barely missed a day this month."

"What's that about, shithead?" Sanji asks in-between kicking Zoro so he'll lose.

Sophie is suddenly interested in the back of Law's head.

"Hm, wonder why," Penguin says, while fighting Shachi in Street Fighter.

"Wonder why," Shachi echoes, obliterating Penguin's fighter with a Senretsukyaku.

"I must be going insane," is Law's official response.

"We're proud of you," Robin laughs behind her hand, real classy-like.

"Fuck off." He sounds disgusted.

He avoids her gaze as he wins a rainbow unicorn out of a claw machine and plops it on Luffy's head, over his straw hat. Luffy lights up like fireworks. This, also, was peculiar. She doesn't understand how that sunny boy could make friends with the human embodiment of sarcasm.

The taiko drums are begging Sophie to play, but she resists. She keeps to the back of the group, watching them take turns fighting off zombies in a shooter game, then lose spectacularly against Sanji at DDR, whose footwork is remarkable. Nami tries to jerry-rig a machine to spit out money. Then Luffy scoops up everyone, Sophie included, and crams them into a photo booth. She tries to wriggle free, but Usopp starts up the camera and then they chant _class rep class rep class rep!_ until Zoro rolls his eyes, catches her around the waist, and hauls her back in.

After they're kicked out of the arcade for almost breaking the photo booth machine, they go ambling through an outdoor mall.

As Sophie is plotting the best method to slip away unnoticed, they pass an open performance set. It's some kind of gimmicky sideshow. Guitar, bass, and a drum kit that music store employees are inviting people to try out.

Brook jumps at the chance to play the Stratocaster. The Monkey Brothers inspect the bass, goofing around with it until Ace throws it over his shoulder and slaps a few riffs.

Luffy yells at Law to come try the drums, and before Sophie fully realizes it, she's stepping forward, one hand brushing aside Law's chest, and sits down on the drum throne. Ace does a double-take. The talking amongst her classmates audibly pauses as they look at her like she's in the middle of a prank.

Her scruffy sneakers tap the kick drums. Brook strums his guitar, nodding at her as she plays a simple rhythm to check the tuning.

Brook and Ace groove with the slow, easy beat she throws at them, and then, watching the crowd grow, Sophie turns relentless on her double-kicks and splashes. She's never played with anyone before, and it's entertaining seeing them keep up with her tempo.

Brook does splendidly, shooting her an amused look. Ace is messier, more rough around the edges.

She keeps up the pace, wanting to see if she can kill Ace off that bass. Her ponytail bounces up and down against her neck, her hands flying across the drum set like a machinegun. She wants to drown that troublemaker out until he gives up, pulling the instrument off his chest in defeat.

Brook eases off into the background, then it's just her and Ace squinting at each other. He grins behind his hair and stops abruptly, letting the bookish, rule-abiding class representative power through with a crazy solo that she goes at so hard an overall buckle pops off, then finishes with a _tap_ of the cymbal.

She wipes her brow on her arm, breathing hard.

The clapping crowd finally registers, her classmates hollering so loud the other mallgoers stare. Law is also clapping, the look on his face not unlike the second he saw her with a cigarette in her hand and smoke between her lips.

Her moment of victory is forgotten; embarrassment sinks in.

"Um," Sophie says, and throws the sticks to the ground. Time to flee.

But Luffy seems to have a preternatural instinct for people who are on the verge of running away from him, because his lanky-limbed body is jumping on her back as he hollers, "So _cool_!" Nami and Sabo pull him off, apologizing. Oh. Now she sees how Law might've ended up as Luffy's friend: against his will and with great suffering.

"Excellent chops," Brook tells her with genuine sincerity. She turns pink.

They talk for a little about instruments while Nami goes off with Koala and Zoro to get takoyaki from a street stall called Hachi's. Sabo asks her questions about the drums, saying he might pick it up someday. Worryingly, Ace is less annoyed that she tried to trip him up in front of a crowd and more charmed that the prim and proper class rep just went apeshit on the drums. They follow after Luffy and Usopp and Chopper into the stores, but tell her to stay _right there_ so they can talk more later.

Sophie sits on a bench, panicking again. She's made herself knowable. She's trapped herself amongst a group of delinquents who thinks she's a person with _interesting hobbies_ and not coping mechanisms. She wants to go home.

Robin sits next to her, resting her feet on Franky's lap. Robin is probably the most intimidating person Sophie's ever met. She has a sleeve of flower petals tattooed down her left arm, a leather ensemble on, and shiny black boots; she wouldn't look out of place in a high-class restaurant in Gion. Or, like, a pantheon of goddesses.

"What else do you do for fun besides drums?" Robin asks with a shrewd sort of smile.

"I listen to science podcasts." …She is looking forward to transferring schools and never opening her mouth again.

Law leans over. "Have you heard about the uptick in nitrogen pollution in salt marshes?"

It takes her moment to respond. "Yeah." Sophie curls her legs up on the bench, facing him. "Scary, right?"

"The climate's gone to shit. We're all dying in a few years."

They argue over the moral revolution coming for oil companies, and climate defeatism, and broken political systems. Two hours pass before Sophie even realizes it, and they drag her on a subway—tangled together, noisy, sticking their feet up against the poles, laughing—and relocate to an izakaya. The head chef barely bats an eye at a group of rowdy, underage kids crammed together around one table and ordering drinks. This is probably not an entirely legal establishment either, judging by the gnarly tattoos on the cooks. Sanji works there part-time, and lives above the izakaya with the head chef, Zeff.

When the old man with the busted leg comes around to greet Sanji's friends, Sophie introduces herself by saying, "Hello, my name's Yudent and I'm a student."

Zeff the chef does not find this amusing.

Water goes up Sanji's nose. He excuses himself to go outside, laughing hysterically.

Her bad joke properly endears her to Sanji, and he orders dishes for her. He also gets irrationally angry on her behalf when Patty serves the dishes, yelling at the men to cook it over again. She tries to calm him down, to no avail. ("It's okay! I can't taste the difference?" "_Did you hear that_!?_ The lady can't even taste the difference between your food and actual dog shit_!" "NO, THAT'S NOT WHAT I SAID!")

Along with beers and sours, Sanji brings out a bottle of plum wine and passes it around. Maybe it's because she feels pleasantly stuffed from delicious food, but she accepts a glass out of politeness and turns to Law, poking him in the arm. "If you take your phone out, I'm leaving."

Either it's not as quiet as she intends to or Nami has superhearing, because, sitting on Sophie's other side, she spins around. "Why? What's wrong?" Nami narrows her eyes at Law. "I knew something was off when you brought along a class rep. What'd you do to her, asshole?"

"Nothing," he retorts a little too quickly.

"Did he do something?" she asks Sophie. "Because I know three idiots who are always ready for a fight." She jerks a thumb at Luffy, Zoro, and Sanji, who are in the middle of scuffling for the last pork rib skewer.

"He… sends me these videos, sometimes," Sophie begins slowly, aware of the intense gaze piercing her back.

"Uh-_huh_," Nami says, her eyes cat-slits. Koala rolls up her sleeves while staring at Law, and Robin begins deliberately cleaning off her knife.

Sophie's never seen him sweat before. It's funny what three girls can do to a young man who usually seems so composed.

She leans forward, waving her hand in front of her face like a gossiping old granny. "I keep telling him to enjoy the moment. Teens and their phones these days, you know? Put it _down_ once in a while." Then she reaches for a gizzard skewer and digs in.

As the night continues, Nami drinks Ace, Sabo, and Franky under the table. Brook wedges himself between her and Law, immersing her in conversation about music. Luffy eats so much he falls right off his chair, patting his huge belly. Penguin, Shachi, and Usopp sing pretend karaoke. The constant sizzle of meat on the grill perfumes the air.

When everyone else is properly wasted, she feels brave enough to finish her plum wine. Then she tries a glass of what Nami says is her favorite cocktail, Zoro's preferred sake, shares a bottle of shochu with Koala. It's all so delicious and _good-times-feelin'_, and in the warm, steaming izakaya, Sophie is so plastered that she slurs to Robin, "Even though we just met, I would set myself on fire for you."

Someone's helping her out into the humid back alleyway, the dirty walls rain-slicked and illuminated by dim lanterns strung up above them. She staggers against the arm as it helps her sit down on a concrete step. He smells like the heavy beers he's been putting away all evening.

She fans her face, her cheeks bright pink. "Why'd you bring me out here?"

"You look like you're about to collapse."

"I mean _here._ Tonight."

The lantern light shades Law's face in shadows and reds. "Thought it'd be fun."

Sophie's response is to calmly tighten her ponytail, lean over at a thirty-degree angle, and throw up into a flowerpot.

"So fun," she groans, wiping her chin.

After a beat, he says, "You could've said something. I think Nami's been wanting an excuse to beat me up for a while now." (Specifically, she doesn't like it when he hangs out around her group because he scares away girls. Sanji also tells him this, but in his case, that might be a good thing.)

"And watch as you showed them a photo of me smoking?" Sophie retorts, and buries her face in her hands. He starts talking about how no one would care, how he and Sanji and sometimes Robin smoke too, but— "But _I_ care. Because it's _me_. I'm not… the sort of person who does that. I don't ever stay out past curfew. I eat lunch in the nurse's office. I wear sensible shoes. A girl like me doesn't smoke or drink or throw up in seedy alleyways."

He takes a cigarette out of his pocket. "You need a smoke break."

"We're not building some sort of camaraderie here."

"I just saw you puke in a flowerpot."

"I'll puke on you next if you don't shut up," Sophie threatens, and makes good on it by resting her throbbing head against his neck. With her eyes closed, she can imagine she's just leaning against a warm… light pole. The heat along her back is just from the humidity of the night, and the light movement of her ponytail is just the wind, not someone's tattooed fingers running through her hair.

Even in her foggy state of mind, Sophie is aware that Trafalgar Law is treating her as a source of amusement because he's bored with everything—school, his friends, his life. He'll get bored of her, sooner or later. She'll just have to wait. Until then, _was_ that nice scent his fabric softener?

"Hey, bro," says a passing voice. "She need a place to crash?"

A hand tightens around her shoulder. "Fuck off."

The voice does not, in fact, fuck off. The voice comes closer.

"Sweetheart, what's a cute thing like you doing with this punk? You want us to take you off his hands?"

Blinking fuzzily, Sophie responds by pulling out the pepper spray from her bra and blasting it at the man-shaped silhouette in front of her. He hurtles backwards, screaming. She gets hit by some of the backsplash and screams louder.

More voices shout—oh, there's a whole group of them, and big hands grabbing her arm—Law shoves them back and yanks his switchblade out of his back pocket. He proceeds to jam it into every available inch of skin he can.

Then the izakaya door rips open and Luffy smashes his fist right into a guy's nose.

Through the haze of pepper spray tears, she can see their high school classmates slamming into the group of grown men that she's starting to be pretty sure just propositioned her for sex. After a short but vicious scuffle, the bruised and bloody survivors are sprinting away from the sound of Luffy's flip-flops hitting the ground as he roars, "Get the fuck outta here! Or we'll fuckin' kill ya, bastards!" Eyes squeezed shut, Usopp hurls a flowerpot at the retreating backs. Two guys go down in one hit.

"Usopp, that was amazing!" Nami exclaims as she goes through wallets and crams bills into her shorts.

"Mother of god… I, I mean, _One-Shot Usopp strikes again_!"

Zoro's taken out his three kendo swords and had left a puddle of unconscious guys on the alley floor. With an abashed smile, Sanji asks the others for napkins to wipe the blood off his shoes because he doesn't want to get the izakaya dirty. Ace and Sabo, who both still seem pretty wasted, are taking turns bashing some guy's head in.

They're all monsters, straight from the Hell School. The title is deserved.

Nami buys a bottle of water from a vending machine and helps Sophie wash her eyes out (while saying she owes her one hundred yen, thanks), Koala holds up her hair so it won't get wet, and Robin describes in gory detail how she broke that one guy's wrist. It's very nice of them. Sophie's never really had girl friends before.

Sticking his head out the door, Zeff yells at Sanji to clean up the mess in front of his restaurant. Luffy stretches, then goes back inside patting his stomach and saying that he's hungry again. Koala grabs Ace and Sabo, who are now taking turns breaking fingers, saying she doesn't want deal with a police investigation again. (_Again_? _What_?)

"Your first drunken brawl," Law tells her, cleaning the blood off his switchblade with his shirt. "Welcome to life as a delinquent."

"…Do not even joke about that."

—

Sophie throws the keys on her desk, peeling off her sweaty clothes and taking her hair down. Shoot, she was supposed to call dad today. He's not home. Doctors Without Borders. Should be in Thailand right now. Tomorrow morning, phone call and shower. Sounds like a plan.

While she brushes her teeth, she scrolls through a group chat on LINE that Nami added her to. She's sending purikura photos from the arcade. Sophie spots her face, looking stiff and uncomfortable behind the row of funny faces and smiles. She scrolls through the photos; in one, Nami's shoving the boys lower to get her and Koala and Robin and Sophie, who looks petrified, in the center frame. In another, Law's pulling his lower eyelids down with his middle fingers in an effort to be completely disgusting; in the next, he's a blur as Luffy accidentally-but-maybe-on-purpose elbows him in the face.

It's the best photos she's seen of herself in a while.

She glances at the time. Yeah, she can chance it.

**Sophie** (12:58am)  
_Home safe?_

**The Worst** (1:05am)  
_yea_

**Sophie** (1:06am)  
_Good._

She bites her lip, then writes, _Thanks for protecting me or whatever. I had a fun day. I don't remember the last time I_

She deletes all of it.

Sophie plugs the charger into her phone and flops on her bed, rolling over the blankets. She's almost asleep when her phone chimes.

**The Worst **(1:13am)  
_pic. water._

For some reason, this doesn't make her as angry as his demands for weird photographs usually makes her. She turns on the light and sends him a photo of the glass of water on her nightstand. A _read_ checkmark appears below the photo.

It's a nice way to end the night. On a note of tentative… friendship? Ha. Absolutely not. Shared humanity in the teenage experience of drunken parties? Maybe. She closes her eyes, trying to sleep. And tries. And keeps trying.

There's something that's been boiling in her the whole month. She opens her phone again.

**Sophie** (2:34am)  
_Your turn for a photo, dirtbag._

She shoves her phone underneath her pillow.

She hopes he's asleep.

She wants him to be asleep.

It's so late, of course he's asleep. And if he isn't asleep, why would he bother answering her message?

Her pillow chimes.

**The Worst** (2:37am)  
_at your mercy. any requests?_

She rolls over on her back, looking up at the slant of light from the streetlamps outside stretching over her ceiling. What would be the most effective blackmail? She lights a cigarette, thinking. For whatever reason, her mind keeps going back to that day in gym, him on the basketball court, the sweat running down his back and drenching his shirt.

She makes up her mind and rolls on her belly, typing furiously.

**Sophie** (2:43am)  
_You. Take your shirt off._

See, this is what a smart person does. This is how they blackmail. She's learning how to be properly wicked.

A minute passes.

Then another.

…She isn't going to get a response. Clearly, Law is not going to extend the same courtesy to her because he is not the one being blackmailed. And why would he? He never solicited her for anything scandalous. It's always been something close-up and… perfectly inoffensive.

An ear, an ankle, a toe, her desk in her room, all things that can't really be traced back to…

And then.

And then Sophie realizes she's made a grave mistake.

She almost chokes on her cigarette, frantically opening her phone again to delete her message. She didn't just accidentally solicit nude photos of—no, no, no, this is completely _wrong_—! There is a line, a _line_ that must not be crossed, a line that separates 'dumb troll' from 'this is no longer funny, what were you even thinking, do you even have a _braincell_'.

She's_ so far over that line_. The line is gone from view.

Obviously he's already seen it, but she can pretend she's still tipsy. That it's just a joke. That she meant to say take a photo of your _shirt,_ not what's underneath it, but she got her vowels and nouns and verbs mixed up and—

Her finger is poised over the delete message button.

A photo appears.

A bare chest, an array of black tattoos along his clavicle, his ribcage, stretching around his side. He's lying down on what she assumes is his bed, mostly faceless. The camera catches the slightest bit of his mouth—the barest shiver of a grin forming—his jaw, his dark nipples, his sharp hipbones. One hand with chipped black nails and _death_ on the knuckles and _fuck you_ down the middle finger is splayed across his lean stomach, the other raised to hold the phone. She could've asked for a photo of his tea kettle for all of his nonchalance.

Curiously, her mouth is drier than sawdust. She thinks about that bed he's lying on, the little _read_ checkmark he must be seeing on his end, the blanket bunched up around his legs, the disappearance of a shirt thrown across his room, the secret, furtive world the two of them have found themselves in.

Her fingers tap the keyboard.

**Sophie** (2:51am)  
_Gross._

She drops her cigarette in the water and shuts off her phone.

.

.

.

Class Representative Sophie's Delinquency Tally:

Counts of smoking: 5  
Threats of violence: 7  
Intent to spit in coffee: 1  
Glasses of alcohol: 4  
Public intoxication: 1  
Flowerpots vomited in: 1  
Drunken brawls: 1  
Requested naked photos: 1

Total: 21


	2. highschool au: part ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to write part two. You are still to blame. This chapter is rated m for more mature/offensive language. Leave a comment if you enjoyed this! I love reading that shit!
> 
> Pairings: Aside from Roomboom, lotsa Sophie/Zoro (Lostways!) and Sophie/Ace/Sabo in here (…ASS?)

.

.

.

a comprehensive corpus of the **hazards **of smoking while class representative  
(part ii)

—

INTERLUDE: WINDOWS VISTA

—

He's watching open-heart surgery videos on his phone to fall asleep to when the next message comes, and it suddenly captures his interest much more than the current shot of gloved hands soaked in blood.

**Class Rep Bitch **(2:43am)  
_You. Take your shirt off._

There is something to be said about the liminal magic of the small hours.

Sitting upright, Law yanks his shirt over his head and flings it to the ground somewhere over his school textbooks. Why was he wearing a shirt in the first place? It's too fucking humid tonight, the wind coming through his open window stale and smoggy. Really, her text is just serving as a reminder that shirts are dumb.

He pushes aside the threadbare sci-fi manga cluttering his pillow, shoves his ratty boxers slightly lower on his hips—the holes along the waistband are on-brand and, well, something more for her to look at—and lies down again, raising his phone with one hand and sticks the other behind his head.

No, too cheesy. He doesn't want to look like a cornball.

He shifts and rests his hand over his stomach, making sure not to cover any tattoos, and takes a couple more shots.

He examines them. The lighting isn't great. But he also doesn't want it to be flattering, because then it looks deliberate and lame and that disgusts him on a spiritual level. With flash on, then. Looks candid, casual, whatever. Like he fucking doesn't give a shit, like he's sent a million sleazebag shirtless photos before. Who the fuck cares? Not him.

—crap, he's glaring too hard in this one. He doesn't want her to think she's grabbing him by the balls and forcing him to do this (though, that thought is kinda—), and in the next couple photos he looks like a try-hard thumbnail of a porn video he doesn't want to click on.

Fuuuuck, she caught him at a bad time. Hasn't showered yet, grime and sweat in his hair, still coming down from being buzzed out of his mind.

Okay, faceless it is. He holds his hand as far away as he can, trying to get all his tattoos in. Should he put on his rings? He's already blindly rummaging for them on the floor and fitting them on his fingers when he thinks, _what are you doing, dumbshit_. Who the hell casually wears rings when they're lying in bed, presumably being _bothered_ for half-naked photos in the middle of the night? Fucking vomit-worthy. Law takes them off and scatters them on the floor again.

Fuck it. After taking a few more photos, he scrolls through the album and chooses the one that looks the most nonchalant while also guaranteed to maximize her output of scandalized shock.

A _read_ checkmark appears instantly. He bites down on his lip.

He sets his phone over his stomach, picking at his nail polish so it falls in flecks over his chest and listening to the speeding cars below his open window, the distant thudding vibration of a party somewhere down the block, Rosinante snoring in the other room, the couple upstairs having creaky sex through the thin walls. Neon lights from the corner store across the street bleed through the window, coloring his legs in blues and pinks like a canvas dripping oil.

Her face has probably turned an acid shade of red. She's probably rolling around in her bed (now that's something he's been wanting a photo of but is right on the knife edge of shit that can get him arrested), her hair probably down around her shoulders like that day in class.

Hm. Maybe she'll be too embarrassed to reply. Law knocks his head back against his pillow. Fuck, should've accounted for that—

His phone lights up. He holds it over his head, reading the message.

**Class Rep Bitch **(2:51am)  
_Gross._

He stares at the one line text bubble on the screen, then drops his hand down on the blanket.

Wow.

She's the fucking worst.

—

The next morning, Sophie wakes up early.

Most days it'd be due to habit, or her constant, internal anxiety refusing to let her stay unconscious for one moment longer. But today, it's thanks to her splitting headache. Rolling around in bed, she remembers why that's so. Her phone is lying on her nightstand, the plastic turquoise cover face-up next to a half-empty glass of water. Her heavy eyelids peel open. She gulps down the rest of it, bringing relief to her scratchy throat.

Sophie turns her phone on, squinting against the light that only intensifies her headache and becomes a thing she wants to kill, immediately. But there are new notifications.

She checks the chat between her and the worst guy. She pauses on the photo he sent her—his bare torso dripping in tattoos, file under Things That Should Be Illegal but Confusingly Are Not. Underneath her comment is Law's reply.

**The Worst** (3:12 am)  
_dirty mouth, class rep_

Sophie rolls her eyes up at the ceiling. Says the guy with dirty everything.

He's written more.

**The Worst** (3:14 am)  
_would be a shame if i took a screenshot our messages and sent it around school_

She bolts upright, staring at the chat.

He wouldn't do that. He wouldn't. Screw it, _he would_.

She should call him and beg him not to, right? Find a lawyer? Hire an assassin, or maybe an angry teenage girl? Nami would be the first to punch his teeth in, and she's pretty sure Nico Robin has hidden a body before, and Koala's supposed to be a black belt in karate, and oh, the utter mortification of asking that awful boy for a shirtless pic swallows her whole—

She scrolls down to the final reply.

**The Worst** (3:15 am)  
_send me a pic of your breakfast when you wake up_

She remembers yesterday's feeling of gratefulness. He brought her to hang out with his friends, who were all genuinely kind to Sophie. He listens to climate change podcasts. He uses a fabric softener that smells infuriatingly good. He hasn't missed a day of school since he started blackmailing her. But that gratefulness has all but vanished in the harsh light of day. He's still a fervent student of psychological torture.

Because, clearly, he's bored with his own life. That's why he barged into hers.

Downstairs, Sophie makes scrambled eggs with green onions, and sticks a croissant in the toaster oven. She makes sure to call her dad first, who's off doing humanitarian aid with Doctors Without Borders. Then she sends Law a photo, captioned, _Bad morning, scumbag_.

As she digs in, her phone lights up with a new message. She wills desperately, pathetically, for him to not ask her about the photo. Don'task her, don't say anything. Or she will immediately run away into the Arctic wilderness, never to be seen again. Pulling her messy curls over her face as a makeshift shield, Sophie peeks at her notifications.

**The Worst** (8:41 am)  
_drink more water and take an advil for your headache_

Relief. Then, irritation. Is this the same person who casually makes threats to destroy her life?

**Sophie** (8:42 am)  
_First, die. Second, you're not my dad._

**The Worst** (8:43 am)  
_first, ask nicely  
__second, not with that attitude_

She frowns, perplexed.

The penny drops. Sophie slams her phone face-down.

When she finishes eating, she cleans up and goes back upstairs, and lights a cigarette. Outside her window, the sun shines warmly on the cars parked along the street, telephone poles, and flowering trees. Everything is still the same. The world doesn't stop turning.

Yet her life gets stranger by the day.

—

I: SAMURAI, UNPLUGGED

—

Their high school's kendo team is famous. Last year, they were the runner-up in the Tokyo regionals. They're a shoo-in for top three this year, except there's a little snag: kendo team members can't participate if they fail their midterms.

And with the way Zoro's grades are looking, he's about to take remedial math and science classes instead of entering the regional competition.

Kendo Captain Tashigi delivers the news to her team, which is to say she makes him dogeza in front of the rest of the kendo team as she explains they're about to lose their star swordsman. Gossip spreads like wildfire and sure enough, the whole school hears about it by the end of the day.

Tashigi's pacing around and ranting about the whole situation when Sophie enters the student gov room for their meeting. "Our first match is against Wano High! They beat us last year, and without that knucklehead, they'll do it again!"

Sophie raises her hand and offers to help him get his grades up. She already has experience tutoring first-years in science. One grouchy swordsman? No sweat.

Tashigi's glasses fall from the top of her head onto the bridge of her nose, gratefully askew. "You'd do that?"

"I swore an oath to follow you into battle, Commander," Sophie replies with a beam. Koby and Helmeppo tearfully salute her bravery.

After school, she struts into Class 2-1 armed with her favorite accessory: textbooks.

Luffy's crew is in the middle of figuring out ways to help Zoro cheat for his make-up exam, which is in two weeks. Usopp proposes sewing answers inside the bandana usually tied around Zoro's upper arm. Nami says they can get resident artist Usopp to tattoo the entire textbook on his arms. Sanji, meanwhile, suggests they cut off Zoro's left hand and see if the teacher will go easy grading his test.

"Oi, Zoro! I can tutor you!" Luffy says brightly.

Zoro, who has been stewing quietly in his chair the whole time, finally snaps back, "You get worse grades than me!"

A loud thud interrupts them: a stack of books, dropping on Zoro's desk. He turns his head to her, three earrings winking on his ear, a sour glare.

"Four-eyes sent her best hound, huh," he says.

Sophie leans over her stack of books. "You're passing your classes even if it kills you, delinquent."

—

In the library, she arranges her study planners, multicolored pens, and post-it notes in perfect organized squares. Sitting next to her, Zoro sets down his studying tools: a thin, beat-up spiral notebook with konbini store receipts falling out of it, and a tiny nub of a yellow pencil.

His notebook just has the word _math_ written inside it, and nothing else. Not even any math.

"_Right_," she says firmly, and flips to the front of the textbook. "Let's review from the beginning of the semester."

Though he throws her a dubious glance, Zoro nods.

They're starting to make some progress when Nami and Robin visit to make sure he isn't giving Sophie a hard time. Tashigi finds him and lectures him for missing practice (it's not like Zoro can help it, but Sophie's pretty sure she's just doing it to see the riled look on his face). Perona comes by to point and laugh, then kicks his chair with her chunky pink boots before leaving.

…For a big, buff jock, Zoro sure gets bossed around by a lot of girls.

The library slowly empties out. Soon enough, it's just them and the clunky computers and their pixelated palm tree backgrounds. The muffled tunes of Brook's jazz band reverberate dimly through the walls. Out the window, students are making their way off-campus. Zoro watches them with a restless sigh.

"Concentrate." Sophie snaps her fingers and points down to the page. "How would you find the square root of negative nine?"

He balances her mechanical pencil over his pursed lips, like a moustache. "I don't get it…"

"Use that beefy brain of yours! The kendo team is counting on you!"

Zoro furiously rubs his hands all over his hair. "Damn it! One more time!"

As he scribbles out the equation, she checks the time on her phone. She'll leave in about fifteen minutes to catch the train for cram school. This leaves her some time to outline the chapters she wants Zoro to reread for homework.

Something catches in the corner of her eye. She goes still.

Between the stacks of books is messy black hair, a baggy jacket, and ratty sneakers. Alongside Penguin and Shachi, Law is standing behind the bookshelf right across from their table. But instead of scanning the book titles, he's looking directly at her through his dark bangs.

Sophie's head jerks down, eyes glued to the numbers on the page. In her peripheral vision, his figure moves across the aisle and into the next bookshelf. They hadn't said a word to each other all day in class. He hadn't messaged her or even walked by her vicinity.

She scoots closer to Zoro. "For this problem, you have to get rid of the equation inside the parenthesis first—"

"Roronoa," Penguin calls, as Shachi pushes up his sunglasses and says with a grin, "Class rep."

Zoro nods briefly at the three boys.

A hand covered in tattoos slides onto the table. Sophie stares at the blunt fingernails with chipped black nail polish that she last saw grazing the hair trailing down his lower stomach. His lazy voice snaps her out of her reverie, "You asked _her_ to be your tutor?"

"I didn't ask," Zoro grumbles back. "But I need the help or else I ain't competing."

"If you don't have anything valuable to add, you can leave," Sophie adds, glaring up. She doesn't actually know if she feels that angry towards him, but anger is the safest emotion. She understands anger.

"See any tantalizing photos lately, class rep?" Law inquires.

Her mouth goes dry. Penguin and Shachi glance at each other in mild confusion, and Zoro furrows his brow.

"I wish dearly for you to make deep, passionate love with a cactus," Sophie replies, and grabs Zoro's chin, pinching his cheeks together and forcing him to look back to the textbook. "Focus."

"I _am_," he grunts, while watching the other boys walk out the door with a mournful expression.

But she's also telling herself that, and pretends not to notice when the tattooed delinquent stops for a moment to look back over his shoulder.

—

"You can do this. You are a majestic butterfly who can crush any math problem between his meaty thighs when he puts his mind to it."

Zoro looks over. His eyes are feverish, like he's reached the end of his sanity. "…I did it wrong again."

"Let me see," Sophie says, leaning over.

Immediately he rips out the sheet of paper, balls it up, and shoves it in his mouth.

"Roronoa! You'll make yourself sick! Open your mouth! _Stop chewing_!"

—

During the weekend, the swordsman meets her at the public library. Armed with a thermos of coffee and her snazziest pens, Sophie waits two hours before he finally arrives, out of breath and saying that the maps on his phone stopped working and he had to get help from the old ladies on the bus. Shaking them off took longer than expected, because they kept trying to feel up his arms.

Sophie is forced to accept that. Zoro _does_ have flagrantly nice arms. It's a little despicable.

Twenty minutes in, he buries his face in his textbook with the air of a deflated corpse. "Imaginary numbers," he says through gritted teeth, "make no _damn sense_."

Threats of bodily harm do not work on Rononoa Zoro. Neither do her fun, encouraging jokes. Sophie's last resort is to weather the storm because she's sure something has _got_ to click if she tries hard enough.

"Why don't we move on to another chapter for now," she says earnestly. "M-maybe quadratic equations?"

He ignores her. "I need a drink."

"It's literally noon."

"A good bottle of sake can cure anything."

"In the sense you're talking about, so can a strong blow to the head. Or a coma."

"Don't tempt me."

Sophie sits back with a beleaguered sigh, her patience wearing thin. She's beginning to realize the 'tiny hurdle' that is tutoring Roronoa Zoro is more like the size of a mountain. She could be at home, watching her docuseries on radioactive isotopes with a cigarette in her hand.

On the table, her phone lights up with a message.

**The Worst** (12:25 pm)  
_zoro's IQ, still room temperature?_

The fact that Law's text is _not_ the most exasperating thing she's had to deal with all day speaks volumes.

She takes a photo of Zoro slumped over on his textbook, his mossy head buried in his tanned elbows. He's wearing a grey tank with a print of a black katana on the front, and the way he's holding his arms makes his gratuitous biceps bulge. He looks over when he notices her, one dark eye glaring at the camera.

**Sophie** (12:26 pm)  
_I want to choke him with a protractor almost as much as I want to choke you with one. [photo attached]_

**The Worst** (12:27 pm)  
_such a comparison to another man offends me_

Sophie rolls her eyes. God, he thinks he's so funny.

**The Worst** (12:27 pm)  
_you won't get anywhere if you try to teach him the normal way  
__idiots learn like idiots_

She stares at the words on her screen, eyes widening.

Sophie urgently shakes Zoro's arm. "You're about to fight a group of samurai, right?"

"Hah?" he replies eloquently.

"You're about to fight a group of samurai, but you don't know how many. They're _i_, a number that we don't know but has to exist in order for you to fight them. If you're facing off against four groups of _i_, and if every warrior, including you, can each strike fifteen times, how many strikes does that equal to?"

He squints, envisioning the battle. He frowns very hard, and says, "Sixty _i_ plus fifteen."

Sophie gapes. "Y-you're right!"

"…I am?"

She throws her arms around his neck. "Idiots _do_ learn like idiots!"

"What the_ hell _did you say?" He grabs onto the table to keep them from falling off his chair. A librarian makes angry eyes at the girl crying on Zoro's lap as he tries to gesture he is currently being mortally humiliated by the whole damn thing, and they get loudly shushed at.

—

June plum rain, swollen and ripe in the smog over the city, decides to burst in a deluge right as Sophie finishes up today's lesson with Zoro and is about to head off to cram school. Rain drenches the school grounds. It's so muggy and humid that she can barely see across the street.

She leans against the wall of the school entrance. Earlier, she lent her umbrella to Rebecca and Shirahoshi, two pink-haired freshmen girls, and told them she has a spare in her locker. Dishonesty is a terrible trait.

She glances down at her phone, tapping against the case, then opens her chat message with Law. She remembers he has a bike.

**Sophie** (4:52 pm)  
_It's raining. Are you at school?_

Right as she sends it, a bike screeches up to her, water splashing behind the wheels. But instead of Law with newly-learned super speed, it's Zoro.

"Where you heading?" he shouts, also umbrella-less. Thankful, Sophie clambers on behind him and directs him to the station.

He takes three wrong turns and almost runs into a bus.

Ten more minutes of this, she thinks _okay_, and makes him stop at a konbini for shelter. They're both drenched to the bone. Shaking themselves off inside, she gets a coffee and a cheap hand towel, and Zoro buys himself two onigiris.

They go back outside and stand underneath the covering that extends over the konbini's entrance.

Sophie pats her face dry and wrings out her hair as best she can. Even if she runs to the station now, she can't go to the cram school sopping wet. She doesn't want to risk getting sick, and her dad'll yell at her if he finds out she went to school anyway with a cold and infected ten other people… again. She squeezes out the water from the towel and offers it to Zoro.

He refuses, arms crossed over his soaked shirt. "It's free training."

She used to think Zoro was one of the saner individuals in his crew—aside from his romantic and possibly sexual longing towards sharp objects—but apparently not.

Sophie sips her coffee, he eats his onigiri, and they watch the rain.

"This is the first time I ever missed a day of cram school," she remarks. "I started going since I was twelve. That's five years of perfect attendance. …Oh, but I'm not angry or anything. It's a weird relief. I never knew I could _not _attend it."

"Huh," he says. "You like studying that much?"

"I like… not failing." A bit of an understatement. Low A's make her upset.

"Not failing is good. Winning is good." He nods. "But no man dies knowing only victory."

The warrior-like aphorism makes her laugh. Quietly voicing her agreement, she checks her phone, eyebrows rising as she sees three missed messages.

**The Worst** (4:55 pm)  
_need a ride?_

**The Worst** (4:58 pm)  
_where you hiding_

**The Worst** (5:16 pm)  
_couldn't find you at the station  
__if you haven't been kidnapped, send a pic of the rain_

Another weird request. She aims her camera at the street, catching the side of Zoro's head, his wet green hair and earrings slightly blurred in the foreground. With the moody blue-grey hue of the sky and the rain-slicked traffic lights, it… turns out kind of beautiful. She's never had an artistic eye for anything. Sophie sends it over, hoping for whatever odd reason Law would like it.

A read checkmark appears almost instantly. But no response.

Frowning a little, she sticks her phone back in her bag and regards Zoro again. "You… like kendo, right? Do you think it's what you'll do for the rest of your life?"

"I'm a swordsman. I'll always be a swordsman. But competition is another thing. If I win enough matches, I can get sponsorships. I can use the money to fix up my dojo. But when I turn thirty, forty… it'd be naïve to say I can make money off of it for so long."

Sophie can't quite hide her surprise. She didn't know he was so self-aware, or so sensible. "I think," she says, looking up at dripping streetlights and humming neon signs, "you might've been born in the wrong era."

"Not the first time I've heard—" Zoro blinks at her a few times. He looks away, mouth grimacing.

Sophie frowns back, then realizes, _oh_. Her shirt's gone… clingy. She whips her school blazer around herself, glaring through a blush. "Don't—"

"I_ wasn't_." His head is turned pointedly away from her.

"…Double standards is that I can see your breasts through your shirt and that's perfectly fine."

Zoro takes a deep, pained breath. Like he's trying to stop his soul from escaping his body. He wears that expression a lot around her. No wonder he found himself friends with so many girls. Something about honor.

"Why've you been helping me?" he asks, his eyes still on the rain. "Don't you have better things to do?"

"I'm a class representative. Helping is what I'm supposed to do. And I know I'm hard on you troublemakers, but it's only because I… well, I see how great you all could be."

Zoro rubs off a grain of rice stuck to his lip. They share an embarrassed moment of silence.

Sophie clears her throat. "That said, you're going to university, right?"

"'Course," he says gruffly. "The university-level kendo circuit is way more competitive." He goes quiet for a moment. "I don't know when, but one day in the future, when no one's going to the dojo anymore because the times have left us behind, I'll go for a long walk. I'll take my swords, close the dojo, and start walking. See where the wind takes me."

Migratory ronin. Wandering across desert plains, autumnal forests. The last wild places the world still has to offer. What a dreamscape of adventure, she wants to say. What she actually says is, "Be careful you don't get arrested for bringing swords on public transportation."

"Yeah, I know."

"Like, from experience? …Zoro. Zoro-kun. Your silence is telling."

He goes faintly pink, and remarks that the rain is letting up.

—

Sophie tosses a piece of popcorn up and down. "Ready?"

Tying a black bandana around his forehead, Zoro nods. He's holding three switchblades; one in each hand and one between his teeth. He edges back in the grass, adjusting his stance.

"Name the products of cellular respiration!" she shouts, pitching popcorn at him.

"Santoryu… _Oni Giri_!" The popcorn is cut in eighths. Zoro's eyes are closed in deep concentration. "…ATP and carbon dioxide."

"Correct!" She throws another popcorn. "What's the cause of your legs getting tired and cramped after running for too long?"

"_Nitoryu Iai_! _Rashomon_! …Lactic acid."

"Correct! What's the reaction that takes place in the matrix of the mitochondria?"

"_Ittoryu Iai_! _Shishi sonson_!" The split popcorn flies through the air. Zoro dramatically sheathes his switchblade. "…I forgot."

"Two out of three! I'm so proud!" She flings her arms around his neck.

"I told you to stop—_mrpphh_—doing that!"

"It's citric acid cycle, by the way," Sophie informs, still hanging onto his back.

"You can say that while standing far away from me."

"Yes, but that doesn't make me feel like a beautiful sloth building a home on a cranky yet powerful tree."

Zoro responds to that by dropping her flat on her butt.

—

"If you can fight twelve samurai every two hours," Sophie says, sitting cross-legged on Zoro's back to increase his weight resistance, "and Tashigi can fight twelve samurai every three hours, how many samurai can both of you fight together in an hour?"

His arms strain as he lowers himself to the floor. Sweat drips down his face. "…Ten."

"Correct!" she chirps, taking out a pen from behind her ear and scribbling in her notebook. She's somewhat charmed by how much she feels like a small, sprightly bird sitting on a broad tiger's back. It's also mesmerizing watching the muscles on his back flex and contract. "You just hit one hundred push-ups, by the way."

"Fifty more."

"Okay, but I need to use the bathroom—"

He lifts one arm and grabs her knee, without even stopping his exercise. "I said," Zoro snarls, "_fifty more_."

She promptly engrosses herself in a book, staying right where she is.

—

She finds him in the library at their usual table. He's dozing off with his head in his arms, a pencil loosely gripped in his fingers, his tightly-cut green hair and triple earrings bathed in the warm afternoon light. Zoro even scowls when he's asleep. That has to be some kind of special ability.

His homework is already done. Sophie checks over it and smiles in surprise. He's made remarkable improvement.

She can pester him about the wrong answers when he wakes up.

—

"Uh… the exam starts in five minutes."

"We have until the last minute, sensei!" Sophie shouts frantically.

The day of his make-up exam, Zoro's crew, Tashigi, and Sophie are gathered in his classroom. He's wearing his kendo-gi for mental support and holding his pencils three-swords style. Tashigi ties a headband around Zoro's forehead and yanks it tightly. Nami is shouting last-minute advice, and Usopp and Sanji are flipping through textbooks and quizzing him.

"Oi, Zoro," Luffy says seriously. "I wanna help. Should I punch the teacher's lights out?"

Zoro takes a deep breath. "…Okay."

"_No_!" Sophie grabs Luffy's shirt.

"It's time!" The teacher claps her hands. "Everyone out!"

—

The next day, she doesn't need to ask if he passed or not. Class 2-1 is still buzzing about it when she runs in, and Zoro's eyes lights up when he sees her. Gripping in his hand is his exam, a big fat seventy-six percent scrawled on it. Sophie jumps up and throws her arms around his neck. Though Zoro wheezes, he lets her. It's one last celebratory neck-choke-hug, after all.

Tashigi sticks her head in the classroom and whistles. "Let's train, Roronoa!"

Unconsciously, perhaps due to all the times he's given her his homework to look over, he tosses Sophie his exam. She hugs it, beaming. She's definitely going to frame it when she gets home. As he runs out of the classroom, Zoro shoots her a full, real grin.

"You really did it, class rep," Nami says wryly. "I have to say, I'm impressed."

"Of course," Sophie huffs, her eyes sparkling. "After all, my mission is to support my classmates! To foster a wholesome student life! To get everyone to college!"

"I ain't going," Luffy says, picking his nose. He's sitting on his desk, one leg kicked up and resting his chin on his knee.

"…Huh?"

"To college," he adds, and smiles toothily. "I ain't going."

Zoro's exam paper drops from her hand.

—

II: RUN WITH SCISSORS

—

"You need to fix this, Second Monkey!"

Sabo blinks at the hand slammed against the wall right in front of him, blocking his path. His eyes shift over to her arm, her heaving shoulders, and to Sophie's glower on a face flushed from sprinting across the school to find him.

She is sure he'd understand. Sabo is not like his brothers; his wavy blond hair is clean, his shirt is tucked in, and he actually wears his tie. But the wheels come off the wagon when she summarizes Luffy's declaration, and he replies, "I'm not going to college, either."

"B-b-but you have amazing grades! You're the star baseball player! And you're… some kind of rich boy, right?"

A serene sort of menace appears on his face. "Remind me how this concerns you?"

"It concerns me when delinquents take their futures for granted," Sophie retorts, balling her hands on her hips. "Especially when they're influencing their young brother into following them down a path of, of misdemeanors and hoodlumry and—"

"Reminder noted." A genteel smile smooths out his scarred features. "But my advice? Focus on your own life, or people are going to think you're a pest who can't mind her damn business."

Sabo's manners, she learns, are a freakin' _lie_.

But the battle isn't over. There's one more brother who can help.

—

It takes a little effort to find where Ace goes after school without rousing any suspicion.

She once overheard Luffy's crew talking about how he has a part-time delivery job in the city. Her first instinct is to message Law. He's close enough to probably know information about Ace, but not enough to care about why she's looking for him. But she doesn't want to owe Law anything. Who knows what he'd use it for?

Sophie eavesdrops in a conversation between Bartolomeo and his biker gang as they discuss plans for tonight's joyride, then leaps out of the bush, ignores their screams, and asks if they know any shady businesses where a delinquent might find a part-time job. Specifically, one freckled brother of Luffy's.

But Bartolomeo ain't a snitch, so in exchange for Sophie not confiscating the stash of Luffy photographs that fell out of his jacket, he points her to Bonney.

Bonney is in detention because she brought a live fish to class and called it a sushi buffet as she slaughtered it and made the teacher faint. Using this free time to paint her toenails in a fetching pink, she says she's seen a guy who looks like Ace running around the seedier parts of the city. But Kidd will probably know more.

Sophie runs across school again to the metalworking classroom. Kidd wipes his greasy brow, metal parts surrounding him (that he says loudly _were not_ stolen from a chop shop). He forks over the address of a club downtown he's seen Ace at, in exchange for Sophie not telling the school administrators the next time he crashes a car through the school cafeteria.

_Of course_, she lies through her teeth.

—

Trash in the gutters. Sneakers, tied together, flung over telephone wires. Chiming pachinko machines. Flashing neon signs, turning brighter as sunset falls over the city. Women in short skirts and high heels, fixing their lipstick. Pretty young men with nice hair standing around the street, calling for people to join them inside their host clubs.

Sophie quickly walks past the block of cigarette smoke and musty perfume. For a moment, she wishes for Law's company. With his evil glare and tattoos, few would mess with whoever was standing next to the boy with the serial killer face. But she'd rather throw herself off a bridge than text him that.

She inspects the map on her phone. It should be around here somewhere. With an accidental kick of her loafers, a pile of crushed beer cans goes rolling. The tinny noise echoes through the back alley. Sophie nervously hugs her bag, looking behind her. Only brick walls, spray-painted with graffiti. This is fine.

A teenage boy is loitering on a street corner, a little too short to be Ace. He eyes her pleated skirt and knee-high socks, murmurs, "You look like smart student."

Sophie stops. "I _am_ a smart student," she corrects.

"I got three tests next week," he says with a sympathetic nod, stepping closer. His hands are shoved in his bulky jacket. "That shit is stressful, right? You want some help studying?"

She bites her lip, peering at him suspiciously. "Um, I'm… not supposed to take Adderall anymore."

"It's better than that." He holds up a small white pill. "No addictive qualities. Safe. Works like a charm. Ten thousand a pop."

Sophie hesitantly lets him drop it in her hand, thinking back to all the studying she has to catch up on…

"What'd I say about selling on Whitebeard's turf?" comes a snarl.

The boy turns pale and scampers away. Sophie spins around.

She almost doesn't recognize Ace, who's wearing a plain sweater and jeans, all-black. His usual smile and relaxed air have vanished; he turns his glare to Sophie and they both do a double take. His eyes widen like he can't believe what he's seeing. She gapes at the motorcycle gloves and the intimidating scowl on his face.

"What the hell are you—don't take that." He smacks the pill out of her hand and crushes it under his boot. "That's either molly or K."

"Eh?"

Ace pinches the bridge of his nose. "A drug, class rep."

"Oh," she says, and starts. "Oh my god!"

"Are you actually wearing your school uniform?" Ace demands, staring at her in disbelief. "_Here_?"

She doesn't care she looks completely out-of-place in the darkly glittering street filled with nightclubs. She has more pressing concerns. "I'm here to find you! We need to have a talk about how your two brothers are throwing away their futures—"

His mouth goes slack. "You stalked me here to talk about Sabo and Luffy?"

"I didn't stalk you! I a-acquired my information through completely normal means!"

"The more you talk like that, the crazier you sound," Ace informs.

"_I am not crazy_," Sophie emphasizes, eyes bugging out.

He glances around, then looks back at her with a scowl, the flustered honor-roll student hugging her school bag to her chest, the bare knees underneath her skirt. He sighs reluctantly and jerks his head. "Follow me."

He takes her to the club he's making deliveries for. It's a bland, innocent-looking building. The most suspicious thing about it would be the tinted windows. A large man wearing metal shoulderpads stands guard at the entrance. Diamond necklaces and a diamond watch glint from underneath his clothes. He nods at Ace when the boy slouches past, Sophie peering nervously behind him.

"She's with me," Ace says shortly. "On business."

His laughter is a deep rumble. "Sure, sure. But if you want to have fun, go find a love hotel."

"Jozu, do me a favor and fuck off," Ace snaps and tugs on Sophie's arm before she can exhibit the full extent of her outrage.

…Actually, Ace has the anger part covered. Hiding her face behind his shoulder is a better use of her time.

The dark clubroom is crowded for a weekday afternoon. A live jazz bland is playing on the stage. Most of the club patrons are older men, smoking cigars. A few eyes glance up at the girl in the high school uniform. The hard look on Ace's face tells her to ignore them, and she follows after his straight back and steady walk.

Sophie flinches at a loud _bang_, followed by muffled shouting behind a locked door. A beautiful man with painted red lips is working the bar, and he informs Ace that they found a drunkard who was following middle school girls on their way home. Someone named 'Pops' is sorting him out.

She keeps close to Ace—rather, he keeps his hand attached to her wrist, as though he thinks she'll wander off with the next drug dealer who offers her cocaine. The club lights swim over his face, making him look less like Luffy's goofy older brother, the guy who politely declines every confession offered to him behind the school, and more like a dangerous young felon.

She considers bolting. Ace seems to notice, because he says, as he shoves open a door to a back room, "I don't sell drugs here. I mean, not really. I deliver legit pharmaceuticals. They got me bringing them to people who can't afford 'em the usual way."

It sounds—well, nice, but not remotely reassuring.

Ace hoists two large zip-up containers, the kind used to carry a bunch of pizza boxes. Inside, he says, is medicine. He carries them into the back alley and loads them up behind his black motorcycle, painted with tacky flames on the side.

Sophie can breathe better out in the open air, but she still can't believe this whole thing is actually happening. She says it out loud, "I cannot believe this is happening."

Ace's expression is both annoyed and chagrined. "I got roped into this, alright? I crashed my bike into this place last year and, uh, accidentally started a fire. Been repaying my debt ever since."

From inside, a deep voice thunders, "Get a move on, piss brat! Earn your keep!"

Ace curses loudly, with several inventive suggestions on where the old man can stick his 'ugly-ass beard'.

The window next to them opens and a mustachioed man leans out, grinning. He holds out a wad of ten thousand-yen bills. "For Marco." He adds another bill to the fold. "And get yourself a drink on me, kid."

Ace grabs it. "Fuckin' geezer and his damn cronies," he snarls under his breath. He gestures at Sophie. "I got one more delivery, class rep. Come on, it'll be quick."

"Is this legal?" she squeaks, petrified. "I—I shan't be an accessory to a crime!"

His shaggy black hair flutters around his face when he exhales. "I'm not leaving you here on your own. Christ, you'll be dragged inside a host club. They'll have you racking up thousand-dollar debts and working it off."

That is a ghastly, morbid thought, so she carefully clambers on behind him, rearranging her skirt, and he tosses her his only helmet.

"So," she says, clumsily shoving it on, "about your brothers—"

The roar of the ignition swallows her voice and Ace takes off.

—

He stops his motorcycle outside a dingy little house with a vegetable garden outside and several bird feeders. _An opium den, a meth laboratory_, Sophie thinks, and gasps, _no, a brothel?_

A man with dirty blond hair, sandals, and a lazy grin greets them. He is the handsomest hooker she's ever seen, but then Ace says he's a doctor who treats people who can't afford to go to hospitals, though he's not technically licensed by the city. His house is also the go-to place for young activists who get hurt in street protests, and there's been a lot of that these days. This does nothing to quell Sophie's alarm.

It only grows when Marco and Ace head in with the boxes of medicine and Sabo steps outside, rubbing a fresh bandage on his wrist. He's in a plain black sweater and a backwards baseball cap on his head. The smile that he welcomes Ace with turns stiff at the sight of her. She slides off the bike, smoothing down her wild curls.

"You lost, class rep?" Sabo asks, feigning curiosity.

"Rich boy, slumming it with the masses." She delicately taps her chin. "What an overrated trope."

"Did you follow Ace to his job? For fuck's sake, what sort of sleuth doesn't change out of their school uniform?"

"I wanted to talk."

"This is about the college thing again," he guesses.

"Yes."

"You gotta cool it."

"I violently and passionately disagree." She doesn't know when she got so close to Sabo, but she's jabbing a finger into his chest with every adverb. His smile twitches. "Ace, please talk some sense into your brother, preferably with a chair thrown at his head! Tell him to follow you to college!"

Trooping back outside, Ace shoots her a bemused look. "Huh? I'm not going."

She should've expected this. She _really_ should've.

A tan hand smacks Ace on the head. "Stop sayin' that, yoi," Marco says. "You're going and you're gonna learn something useful."

"Vindication!" Sophie roars.

"Ace said you're a class representative?" Marco drawls to her. She clams up and nods demurely, fidgeting with her skirt. "That's good. If more of these young idiots had someone like you on their asses and tellin' them they can do better, the streets wouldn't be littered with so many fools. You're going to college, kid. Or what, you wanna follow in Pops' footsteps?"

"Hell no, and he ain't my pops," Ace retorts, though she doesn't miss how his eyes dart around. "I got shit to do. I'm heading home. Sabo."

Sabo knocks his fist against the taller man's arm. "Thanks for the fix-up, Marco-san."

"We'll give you a ride to the station," Ace tells Sophie.

"Tch," Sabo says in an undertone, then smiles beatifically as she glares.

Getting to the station sandwiched between Ace and Sabo is high up on the list of uncomfortable life experiences. She unwinds her arms from Ace's stomach and clambers over Sabo's lanky legs, stubbornly refusing the hand the latter holds out. He probably spat in his palm.

On the sidewalk, she asks, "If you aren't going to college, what are you going to do instead? Please humor me with a real answer."

"There's always odd jobs here and there." Ace rests his elbows on his motorcycle's handlebars. "Maybe I'll stick around Whitebeard's crew. Those geezers piss me off, but they also protect the block. The way they live is pretty awesome. It's all about right now, right here. Being free, you know?"

Her face screws up in unenthusiastic acceptance. "Fine, I can… understand that sentiment from you, Ace. But what about trying to change to the world?" She looks at Sabo. "I expected something like that from you."

"Sorry for not meeting your expectations," he responds cheerfully.

She struggles for a moment, trying to say that's not what she meant. She changes tactics instead. "You're Luffy's older brothers. Don't you think your actions are influencing him in the wrong way?"

Ace and Sabo glance at each other, sharing a secret grin.

"When it comes to dreams, our little brother doesn't listen to anyone," Ace retorts, revving the engine. His grin is deliriously charming. "Not even us."

When they drive away, Sophie coughs out exhaust fumes and blinks away stars.

—

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Luffy looks up through unruly black bangs, crumbs sticking to his mouth. She lured him to the school courtyard with bread from Pudding's bakery. She hoped they'd be alone, but for some reason pigeons are flocking over to Luffy, cooing around his feet and picking up dropped morsels. Animals seem to gravitate towards him as much as they have a tendency to claw and peck Sophie.

"You can be anything!" she says, waving her arms. "An MMA fighter! A zoologist! A monkey impersonator!"

"Ohhh! I like that!" Luffy enthuses. He tilts his head, one sandaled foot held jauntily aloft as two pigeons land on his leg. "Sure, I'll do it all!"

"…I wasn't _offering_… and no, you can't just—you have to seriously pick something and commit to it."

"Why?"

"Because you… you just have to!"

"Okay." His nose wrinkles in thought. "Then I wanna be happy." Luffy frowns. "Oi, don't look so bummed. Here, I'll give you some of my bread."

She stares at the piece of bread no bigger than her pinky fingernail. "…_This is a crumb_. And that's _my_ bread I gave you."

Luffy whistles.

Sophie turns on her heel, walks to the girl's bathroom, and calmly smokes ten cigarettes two at a time.

—

Between the shelves of a local bookstore, a class representative paces through the aisles. Whenever Sophie runs into a difficult problem, her method of solving it involves obtaining as much information as possible. Perhaps one of these books contains a well-researched strategy for getting the delinquents at Hell School to behave.

She spends an hour examining books about winning friends. Maybe this, she thinks, is how someone like Nami can be so popular even while blatantly hustling people out of their money. She moves down the aisle, reading about charming coworkers, seducing enemies…

Then she's tiptoeing through a certain aisle in the back, one that shall not be named. This is for research. She has no interest in the _practical_ application, only in theories. For someone with such a low amount of charisma like her, every little bit of knowledge helps!

Quickly scanning the shelves, she finds a book with a pleasant, inoffensive-looking cover. Sophie flips open the pages, holding the book high enough so she can hide her face should anyone come by the back of the bookstore. It's the weekend, and she's wearing an oversized shirt with the periodic table on it tucked into shorts. No high school uniform here to identify her.

Fingers leaf through the pages. Blue eyes widen. She scratches her chin, muttering to herself as she considers the unpleasant-looking positions. There's an extensive guide on anatomy as well, and maybe she can inspect that at a later date…

The book is snatched out of her hand.

"Fascinating reading material," Sabo says, eyebrows raising beneath his baseball cap.

Ace is peering over his shoulder. "Now _that_ is flexibility."

Sophie claps her hands over her mouth to keep from screaming. It doesn't really work.

"Why're these pictures all of naked people?" Luffy asks. "Oh, I get it." He grins at her. "You're just like Sanji!"

She ought to stab him for saying that. She cannot let that sentence enter the universe without experiencing deathly consequences. As it is, though, Sophie can barely move because she's trying to recover from experiencing heart attacks in rapid succession.

The three boys are standing before her, examining the book. Her curly ponytail sticks up over her head, trembling as though electrocuted. Her back is to the wall. She can't run.

"The Essential Sex Manual," Ace reads the title aloud. "Hey, if you want to learn more, the softcore videos are behind the next aisle."

"Ace, be polite," Sabo admonishes. "I'm sure she already knows her way there."

She chokes several times before she's capable of responding. It comes out in a high-pitched, "_Wh-what are you doing here_?"

"The better question is," Ace says, crossing his arms over his chest, "what are _you_ doing here?"

"Obviously, she's curious," Sabo reasons. "You know, most people read about porn on their phones. I can't believe you're still analog, class rep."

"I'm… doing r-research. S-scientific research! Also, I got lost. I can't read the names of the aisles. I have… sudden illiteracy disease."

"You had it open to the blowjobs section," Ace points out. "There are drawings."

Horrorstruck, Sophie slaps the book out of his hand.

Sabo respectfully sets it back on the shelf. "You know, they say learning through practice is better than theory."

Sophie claps her hands together and beseeches, "Please don't be t-terrible human beings and tell anyone."

Ace shrugs. "Sure. We won't."

"We're nice, friendly lads," Sabo says. "And it'd be very dickish of us to shame a teenage girl who's curious about sex—"

Her voice reaches 'break glass in case of emergency' levels of shrill, "I'm _not_—"

"But only if you tell us who you're looking this up for." Like a switch, Sabo's amicable smile flips predatory. It is unfair how much fouler he is compared to Ace, and even worse is how well he hides it.

She rallies herself and answers honestly, "No one."

Ace snaps his fingers. "It's Trafalgar, ain't it? We've seen you hanging around his crew."

"H-h-how dare you! The only body I lust after is the student body!"

"Hmmm." Sabo flips through another book and stops at a chapter. "I think this might be helpful for you."

It's opened to _Masturbation: A Healthy Guide to Relax!_ Sophie slaps it out of his hand again.

"That is a rude habit," Sabo remarks, picking it back up.

She presses her hands to her brow, taking deep breaths. How is that _every time_ she does anything remotely scandalous, there's a delinquent loitering around to catch her in the act? She cannot have another Trafalgar Law Situation on her hands. God, not with the three of them. She would, quite simply, die.

"If you never mention this again, I w-won't bother you about going to college for another month," she negotiates. "…Two months! …Until fall semester starts!"

The brothers glance at each other, eyes squinty in silent communication.

"We'll take that," Ace announces finally. "But one last thing." His grin turns wicked. "You know how to use protection, right?"

—

It's a slow night in the konbini, and the cashier is dozing off to the melodic tune of chicken frying in the back kitchen when the doors slide open and footsteps enter. She glances up, shaking off her drowsiness in an appeal to professionalism—then allows herself to slouch over again when she sees it's just a group of teenagers.

As one boy hightails it to the snack aisles, the other three make their way over to the cashier. The boys are good-looking and well-dressed; one wears a dark coat and the other has on a black sweater with a small flame in the middle. The girl, on the hand, looks like she just rolled out of bed in a baggy, shapeless shirt and shorts peeking out underneath. She's whispering furiously to her companions, then stops with an angry blush when they reach the counter.

The good-looking blond with an unusual scar over his eye rests his hand on the counter. "A box of the magnums, please."

_Ah._ The cashier walks over to where the condoms are shelved, listening to them talk.

"Just one box? You think that'll last us the night?"

"It'll be tight, but it should. What's wrong, class rep?"

"This is my face completely believing that will fit. It's more effective when you buy the right size, you know."

"…Oi, Sabo, I think that was an offer to check us out to _make sure it fits_."

The cashier internally fans her face. _Oh, my._ A high school class representative, hanging around these shameless boys. The youth sure have changed since her day. She sets the box of condoms on the counter.

The girl pushes her messy curls out of her eyes, scowling. "Sorry, my friends like to joke," she grits out to the cashier; her words are nice, but her eyes promise murder.

"Yep, we're all friends here," the scarred boy says cheerily. "Just three friends having a grand night with ice cream, chocolate syrup, and magnums."

The girl leans over. "There's also rope, gasoline, and chainsaws involved, for the record."

Over her head, the two boys grin at the cashier. They nod in gleeful unison.

The girl takes out her wallet, but her two companions insist on paying. Like proper gentlemen, they say. The fourth member of their group races over and throws in an armful of chips, then sullenly picks one when he gets shouted at by the other boys.

"And throw in a pack of smokes." The freckled young man slides over the money. "Thanks."

"Wait," the girl hisses, digging through her wallet. "I have a points card."

Purchases in hand, they leave the store. The cashier stares after them, chicken frying in the background.

—

"I'm going to kill all three of you," Sophie mutters into her hands.

Sabo lights his cigarette on Ace's lighter and tosses it back to the other boy, who's already blowing out a stream of smoke to the sky.

"Actually, I'm going to _murder_ you."

"You smoke, class rep?" Ace shakes out another from his pack.

"No, because _I_ am a paragon of virtue and honor." Someone's going to shoot her for these lies one day. She wraps her hand around Luffy's mouth. "Don't breathe in the sins of your brothers, Smallest Monkey! Secondhand smoke is dangerous!"

Unconcerned, Luffy sticks his head over her hands and keeps eating his chips.

Condoms, chips, and cigarettes aside, she swears on her most cherished chemistry books to leave them alone for the rest of summer. She doesn't fully want to give up. Sophie doesn't like failure. She doesn't like the mean taste of it, or the guilty churning in her stomach.

Even though, as Zoro said, no one dies knowing only victory… But just because failure is inevitable doesn't mean she has to accept it.

Inside the train station, they part ways. Sabo deliberately slows, letting Ace and Luffy walk ahead. She's about to head down the stairs to her subway line when she hears him say, "You don't have to try this hard. It'd be easier to leave us alone."

Sophie closes her eyes, trying to fend off a stab of irritation.

Sabo grimaces. "Yeah, it's your sworn duty, I get it. But when you're out here pestering us to do better, who's helping you? Is anyone even concerned about your wellbeing? Or is this some… I don't know, stupid scheme where you pretend like you can do everything?"

She stares at him, the fluorescent lights of the subway reflecting dimly on his good eye. She can say a million helpless things that don't, can't answer his question, so all she does is clutch a plastic bag where a box of condoms rattles around, loose curls brushing over her neck.

He shoves his hands in his coat pockets. "Anyway, about college. I doubt Ace or Luffy are gonna go, but I'm thinking about it. I talked to Koala, and she has all these great plans to make a difference, and, well… I got plans, too." He adjusts his cap. "But keep your expectations low, yeah?"

"Minimal expectations," Sophie agrees quietly. This is the barest trace of a victory, but she'll take it. She thinks about how inseparable the three of them are, how they look after each other, and how she can't even fathom what that's like but knows it must be very special. She says, "You won't be away from your brothers forever. It'll be hard, but I think you can do it."

The corner of Sabo's mouth twists, indecipherable.

When she gets home, she tosses the box in her drawer and opens her window. She hops on the windowsill, a cigarette between her fingers and a breeze ruffling her shirt, watching the distant lights of airplanes fly across the violet dusk.

—

III: SUPA PUNCH

—

Sophie sticks by her word and ceases all activity on Operation: Get Monkeys to College.

She's not sure how it happened, but rumors about Ace start making their way through school. How he's been seen with gravure idols and yakuza types at the clubs downtown. He gets far less love confessions these days, but that doesn't seem to bother Ace at all. He's extra busy with his delivery job.

She sees Sabo and Koala looking at university pamphlets during lunch, though when he catches her watching, he casually lights the pamphlets on fire. She can't believe she ever though his neatly-made tie and good grades made him a gentleman.

Luffy is still… Luffy. Sophie swears she'll crack him. One day.

The kendo team goes on to win the regional competition. The day after, what must be their entire grade goes running through the hallways, Luffy leading the charge, and they throw buckets of soda over Zoro and Tashigi's heads in celebration. Everything is covered in soda and pieces of shredded paper Usopp is saying is confetti. Out of respect for their triumph, Sophie allows them an ample five minutes of festivities before making them clean up.

Brook comes by to lend Sophie another retro jazz-funk album, because she recently returned the first record he lent her after a thorough listen. He doffs his hat, picks up a cup of tea somehow balanced on his afro, and sips it as he jaunts away.

Law texts her every so often, mostly making her eat lunch with his crew on the rooftop. Penguin and Shachi make her trade lunches with them. She angrily bites into their konbini noodles as they eat her carefully-crafted carrot stars and octopi sausages. At least they have the decency to compliment her cooking. (She wonders if she shouldn't have told Law she usually eats lunch in the nurse's office. Then again, she doubts he remembers.)

It feels like everything is returning to normal.

…Which means everything has to come crashing down around her ears.

After school, Sophie is on cleaning duty. She tosses her classroom's trash out at the waste disposal behind the school and heads back. The building's long shadow cuts through the sunny grassy patch that she's walking through, and she sees a shock of red hair in the shadows.

Pushing off of the wall, Kidd ambles over. Her first instinct is that he's got a problem he needs her help with, and she slows down.

He grins, teeth flashing behind his serpentine mouth. Sophie's about to tell him to take those dumb metal spikes off his school uniform, when he says, "He's got dirt on you, right?"

"…Eh?"

"Trafalgar," Kidd says. Sophie dumbly blinks back. "I've seen you with his crew. Paying for the shit he buys at the convenience store. He's making you do it, isn't he."

She stutters, cold sweat breaking out on her forehead, lies spilling out of her as easily as breathing. Kidd ignores them, and he's so tall and broad that she can't even see her escape routes anymore as he walks her around into the shadows.

"Now the fucking question is," Kidd says pensively, "what sort of dirt? And is it bad enough that I can use it, too?"

Sophie inhales. Something takes hold of her. She's done with meekly going along with the whims of every stupid boy she crosses paths with.

She lunges off her feet, ready to sprint, and Kidd barks at her to stop with his hand around her wrist. Their legs tangle and Sophie's chin hits the grass. She bites her lip on accident. One hand comes up to grab the small metal whistle she wears around her neck and she shoves it in her bloody mouth. The whistle rings out, piercing.

"Hey!" Kidd shouts at her. "Hey, stop that! You're gonna give people the wrong impression!"

She whistles harder, frantically wiggling on the ground.

"I said cut that out! Shit!"

She manages to get one arm free from Kidd's tight hold and grabs her phone out of her skirt pocket. "_Fuck that noise_," Kidd snarls in her ear, and they both start wrestling for it. He manages to grab her phone and flings it across the grass.

Still furiously blowing on her whistle, she crawls underneath him and seizes his pants. Kidd yelps. With a tremendous heave, Sophie tugs him over by his legs. She isn't quite sure when her plan changed from 'escape' to 'I am enraged and would like to inflict much pain, thank you'. But it does. His pants don't come all the way off, but his combat boot does. She rips it off his foot and starts waving it around like a javelin, trying to hit every square inch of flesh she can.

And that, of course, makes Kidd very angry.

And when Kidd is angry, Sophie learns she doesn't have a chance.

Her back hits the wall. He slams his hands beside her head so hard bits of plaster tumbles onto the ground. His glare is infernal. She pants, clutching a stich in her side. He exhales heavily through his pointed nose, his nasty, brutish face bare inches from hers.

"You're gonna regret that," he seethes.

Sophie coughs, turning away. "I already do. Please stop breathing in my mouth."

He grabs her chin and forces her to look at him. Blood from her lip stains her chin. Annoyance flashes across Kidd's expression. He _tsks_ underneath his breath, harshly swiping the blood away with his thumb. Sophie flinches in pain. _Ow_—

Then he looks over to the side and barks, "You're late! I told you I had a damn surprise. The least you could do it get here on time."

Sophie peers over Kidd's arm. Her gut lurches.

The boredom on Law's face immediately transforms to blank shock as he notices her.

"I know you're blackmailing the class rep," Kidd say smugly. "I want in, you bastard. What'd she do, work in a maid café? Or, fuck, is she a hostess? She was trying to find Ace the other day. Probably hitting up the clubs he goes to."

Eyes hugely blue, she watches Law's gaze flash from Kidd to her. Does it linger on her bloodstained mouth? She isn't sure. His expression is unreadable, and he makes no move to help her.

"You got a mastermind plan, don't ya? Let me get in on this. We'll use her as a mole and get dirt on the student council, the teachers, everyone. Nobody will fuck with us. We'll rule the school, Trafalgar. Let's tag-team this bitch."

Sophie kicks his leg. "Can you tone down the misogyny, please!?"

"It's a metaphor!" Kidd roars back.

Law tilts his head, eyes shut. He scratches his neck. "That's an interesting idea."

Her expression freezes. Kidd leans away from Sophie and straightens out his shirt with a satisfied grin. She presses her back against the wall, unable to bear even looking at him as betrayal rips through her chest.

Law takes his hands out of his pockets. "But I have a better one," he says.

When Kidd turns, Law punches him in the face.

—

Fluorescent lights glint brightly on the tiled floor outside of the school principal's office. The hard plastic chair digs into Sophie's back.

Sitting next to her on her right is Law, and one seat over on her left is Kidd. Both boys are slouching in their chairs, glaring at the opposite wall, their uniforms filthy with dirt and blood and dusty footprints where they tried stomping each other half to death.

Law's arms are crossed over his chest, his tie ripped away from his shirt and dried blood smeared beneath his nose and across his cheek. Kidd's bruised fists are clenched on the arms of the chair, his legs splayed before him. He's got a swollen black eye. And he's still missing one boot.

Caught between them, Sophie can only nervously wring her hands. Her phone is in her skirt pocket (she found it in the grass afterwards), a weight pressed against her thigh as her leg jitters.

Kidd catches her eye. He tongues his upper canine, fixing a knowing sort of look on her. "He makes you fuck him?"

She chokes. "_What_?"

"You. Fuck. Him?"

"_No_," Sophie says tightly. "We know each other in a totally normal way."

Kidd scoffs. "You two ain't friends. 'Cause he used to talk all the goddamn time about how much he hates your guts."

Her throat closes up. Good. She hates him, too. Law is still glaring down at his shoes. He may have sunk even further down in his chair.

Kidd leans his head back, looking around Sophie at the other delinquent. "If you made her fuck you, you're a bigger slimeball than I thought."

"I will pay you to shut up," Law replies.

"What'd you do, bring her to the bathroom and make you suck her off?" He barks out a laugh. "You sick bitch. How would that even work? It'd be like a giraffe fucking an ugly nun."

"I'm right _here_," Sophie says.

"Lack of consent makes you hard," Law says flatly. "Never would have guessed."

"I bet you took pictures, you dead-eyed creep. Is that what you jerked off to last night?"

"I should make you choke on your own teeth—"

"Try it, cuck—"

Sophie is too exhausted to deal with this. She slides down her chair and out of the way, covering her head.

Before they can go back to attacking each other, the door opens and the principal calls them in.

—

"…and I came across these two fighting behind the school and tried to s-separate them," Sophie finishes, hands crossed in front of her. "That's when the teachers saw us."

"Ish zat what happened, you two?" Principal Kokoro asks with a heavy burp. The eccentricities of Hell School are widely attributed to its chaotic students, though many would say it's thanks to the lax attention of their principal that they can get away with so much trouble.

"Yeah," Law says, looking straight ahead without a blink.

"Whatever," Kidd grunts, glaring off to the side.

"Trafalgar Law, Eustass Kidd," Kokoro decrees, "three daysh' suspension."

—

Sophie shuffles the homework packet around, itching her ankle with her other foot. The apartment door's paint is peeling off on the edges and the hinges are rusty. She knocks quickly and waits around for a while.

No one answers. She takes out her phone.

**Sophie** (4:42pm)  
_Are you home?_

The apartment is built with exterior walkways and stairs connecting the platforms of every floor. The view is nice up here, even if the neighborhood is a little sketchier than what she's used to. It's right in the city, not that far from the seedy downtown area. She lights up a cigarette, watching puffy white clouds drift over the skyline.

Sophie exhales smoke, leaning her elbows on the railing as she checks her phone again. Still no response.

**Sophie** (4:54pm)  
_Helloooooooo._

She drops her head on her arms, ponytail falling over her forehead. _He's really making me do this, huh._ She counts to thirty to calm down, then bites the bullet and calls.

After the third ring, the other end picks up. "_What_," comes a voice groggy with sleep.

"Good morning, delinquent, it's almost five pm. I'm outside."

Her voice seems to register. There's the sound of blankets rustling, like he's sitting up. "…_You're outside? Of my apartment?_"

Good lord. Smart boys can be terrifically dense. "I brought your homework. Should I leave it out here?"

"_No. I—hold on_."

There's a muffled thud inside, then footsteps, growing louder. The door swings open, and Law, messy-haired and still blinking away sleep, appears.

.

.

.

Class Representative Sophie's Delinquency Tally:

Cigarettes smoked: 13  
Threats of violence: 7  
Being tempted to take a street drug: 1  
Accompanying illegal deliveries: 1  
Researching deviant acts: 1  
Buying promiscuous goods: 1  
Partaking in a fistfight: 1  
Arriving at classmate's house unannounced: 1

Total: 26


	3. highschool au: part iii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> notes: what's up, it's hot as balls and this quarantined bitch is sweltering in place! everyone requesting part three: HERE IT IS. also i'm genuinely happy with how many people like this au! thank u for all the hilarious comments, i love you guys and i really appreciate it.  
pairings: roomboom, sophie/nami, tbh sophie/multiple who even am i trying to fool. why else are you here, what did you expect?

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a comprehensive corpus of the **hazards **of smoking while class representative  
(part iii)

—

I: AFTER SCHOOL SPECIAL

—

Let it be clear that she does not usually (read: ever) walk inside a delinquent's place of residence of her own volition.

It's a purely professional visitation. She's only there to drop off homework. Nothing more!

And yet Sophie is reluctantly curling up on the other end of his old, saggy couch, the delinquent sprawling his lanky body next to her. There are several distractions that lead up to this, and _none of them are her fault_.

**Firstly**: His apartment.

It's tiny and cramped, but there's a lived-in, homey untidiness to it. Cheesy magnets are stuck on the fridge and day-old daises sit in a coffee mug on the countertop. He gives her a pair of too-big, heart-patterned slippers to wear and she hugs her elbows to avoid accidentally bumping into anything. There's not even room for a normal kitchen table, and she is sure Law and whoever he lives with eats dinner around the kotatsu, vegging out in front of the tv. Dirty bowls are piled in the sink. The ceiling fan _whiiiirs_. Faint sirens sound from a few blocks away. Grade-school kids are kicking around a ball in the alley below, their shouts ringing loud and clear through the paper-thin walls.

She's faintly scandalized. How can anyone study like this?

**Secondly**: Bepo.

Bepo is a very affectionate white mop. He accepts belly-scratches and is a most ardent giver of nuzzles. She is almost beside herself with fury. How _dare_ he have such a cute dog? Bepo and the promise of petting him are the main—nay, the only reasons why she has been lured onto that couch. The dog is squeezed between them, his fluffy tail wagging furiously. At least there are no signs of animal cruelty anywhere. She always assumed he kept a collection of frogs to torture.

He mentions that he didn't know she liked dogs. She corrects him; she likes cute things because there is a severe lack of them in her life. Including the budding felons she is forced to interact with because they are blackmailing her.

"That is a shame," agrees the boy who is blackmailing her.

**Lastly**: The delinquent himself.

His sweatpants are rumpled from having just woken up and his slippers have little smiley faces on them. He scratches the back of his head and the motion lifts up his shirt over his stomach, and she is so preoccupied with _not looking_ that she almost misses him saying, "You want to smoke and watch some anime?"

(He doesn't mean cigarettes.)

His tv is ancient and must've been collected from a junkyard from decades ago. The screen fizzes with static.

"They're doing reruns of Cowboy Bebop," he says.

"I'm going home," Sophie replies tersely, trying to ignore the fact that she was just offered weed by the guy determined to make her life a living hell. "I've dropped off your homework, so I'm done here."

"You can pet Bepo."

…

…

…And this is how she ends up sitting next to him on his couch, telling herself she'll only stay long enough to make sure he's doing his homework.

His long, tattooed fingers carefully roll a joint over his math textbook, and it's so sinful Sophie has to look away. She pulls her legs up, sitting on the side, turned away from him as she scratches Bepo. The couch, much like the entire apartment, is cramped. The dog squishes over them both, his paws pressing on Sophie's skirt. Her legs are covered by modest knee-high socks, but she still does her best to keep her toes from touching Law's leg.

There's a fading bruise on his forehead and one around his jaw. He throws one arm over the back of the couch, the other bringing the lit joint to his mouth. She catches a slight twitch across his face as his hand brushes his cut lip. She thinks about asking if it hurts.

"…Waiting for me to take my shirt off?"

Sophie launches a pillow at his face, her sympathy meter slamming back to zero.

"We can have Jet's glorious voice in the background," she snaps, "but we're doing our homework!"

He stuffs the pillow behind his back and props his foot up on the kotatsu table, then obligingly starts on his homework. He taps his pen against paper and exhales smoke through his nose. "I would've guessed Spike or Faye. But Jet's your type, huh? Grimy old men?"

Sophie sniffs haughtily. "They have a certain dignified maturity boys your age couldn't even begin to dream of."

"Sure." Then he says under his breath, "Jailbait."

She refuses to deign that with a response, and returns to her homework. As he writes, he takes another hit and offers the joint at her.

"Get that. Out of. My face."

Law does, shrugging. "You want something to drink?"

"_No_."

They work without speaking, Cowboy Bebop running quietly in the background. His tv is clunky and staticky, and the anime flickers with a red-and-blue overlap in some ode to retro nostalgia. She is a little horrified by how quickly and easily his pen moves across paper, and finds herself glancing over on repeat to make sure he's not finishing the chem homework faster than her. He's _high_, for crying out loud. The universe is terribly unfair.

"Did you save it?" he asks, breaking the silence. "My photo."

"Absolutely not. And can you for the love of god concentrate."

His eyes lift, significantly lazier than before. "Want to see where I took it?" His voice is scratchier too as he gestures at one of the closed bedroom doors. "You came all this way."

Her face could've been genetically related to a tomato. "To give you your homework, not to be psychologically tortured."

"Is this really all you're here for?"

"Are you telling me to leave? Because I can."

Law casually switches gears and asks her to explain the next set of chem questions to him. This makes her scowl because she _knows_ he doesn't need help. But she's also a class representative, which means she is a _good person_, and even though it's _this_ delinquent…

She has to scoot closer to him, and Bepo eagerly stretches over both their laps. Her mouth is on autopilot, going over Lewis structures. He smells like weed and fabric softener. It is the most confusing scent in the history of humankind. Does he get a sadistic kick out of making her lean over and share his textbook and stare at the thin silver chain around his neck and wonder why that little detail wasn't in the photo he sent her?

"Thanks." The corner of his cut lip curls in a smirk. "I didn't know you were smart, class rep."

…She is _certain_ of it.

Bepo's too heavy to wiggle around, so now she's forced to sit right next to him instead of pressed to the furthest end of the couch. Thankfully, he keeps his foul mouth shut after that. Except for the shifting of his hand resting on the back of the couch that occasionally brushes against her ponytail, she can actually focus and get her work done.

Every so often, the train rumbles right past his apartment. Its bright lights flash through the kitchen window blinds. Through the floorboards comes muffled laughter from a family downstairs. The rigidity in her back eases away and Sophie begins to settle back into the couch.

Then Law offhandedly mentions there are leftovers in the fridge.

Gasping, she checks her phone. It's already dinnertime. She can't believe it. She just wanted to drop off homework and ended up staying out till past seven. She has to head home immediately.

"Um…" Sophie says, realizing something else as she slips on her backpack. "Are your parents…?"

"My dad gets back pretty late." Law steps into his sneakers, keys jangling. "I'll walk you to the station."

"What? No, I don't need—"

An echoing _bang_ erupts down the street, followed by escalating shouts and a car alarm going off.

"…That would be appreciated," she says in a tiny voice.

They go on a walk with Bepo through the neighborhood. The evening is nice and warm, and she can admit to herself it's kind of—no, not _nice_, it simply feels safer than usual, next to a scoundrel who looks like Law. The enormous dog doesn't hurt, either.

He even lets her take Bepo's leash for a while as they traverse the side streets, her stumbling after Bepo with both hands on the leash and him snorting as he watches his dog walk his class representative.

Before long, they reach the station, and Law ends the night with a crooked grin and a short, "See you tomorrow."

—

The next day, she sits at the kotatsu table because she's learned her lesson.

Law sprawls out on his couch, resting his homework on his legs. The tv's playing reruns of Lupin the Third, green suit. They work in relative peace—aside from the train rattling the walls, and the muffling footsteps running on the stairs outside, someone upstairs practicing guitar, but she doesn't mind the noise so much anyway, it makes the world feel so much more alive and vibrant.

When it gets late, he casually mentions he made some onigiri before she arrived. She sits up with a gasp, his comment reminding her to grab food at a convenience store on the way back.

She quickly packs up her things and he walks her to the station again with Bepo. The nighttime city air is cloying and smoggy, and the streetlights around them hum faintly with power. He sees her off outside, and she heads to her station platform and settles on a bench.

Tonight was wondrously uneventful. Sophie is adequately pleased with how he's been doing his homework. She scuffs her shoes over the ground, picking at the scratched plastic of the bench. Then she pulls out her phone.

**Sophie** (7:32 pm)  
_Hey, so… thanks_.

**The Worst** (7:32 pm)  
_i needed to take out bepo for a walk anyway_

**Sophie** (7:33 pm)  
_I meant for… I could've handled Eustass Kidd by myself.  
__After all, I'm quite experienced in dealing with you troublemakers._

**Sophie** (7:34 pm)  
_But it was still nice of you to do that._

She's also considered the theory that he and Kidd just wanted an excuse to beat each other up. She wouldn't be surprised if her situation turned out to be the unfortunate setting of two boys working out their passionate aggression on each other.

**The Worst** (7:36 pm)  
_how nice would you say i am?_

**Sophie** (7:36 pm)  
_I'm sure you can be even nicer. Like deleting that photo._

**The Worst** (7:36 pm)  
_i'm thinking of putting it in a gallery.  
__it's a piece of art._

When she gets home, she stuffs her face into her pillow, considering deleting the stupid chat app, and her phone, and her life, and the world. Her window is open, and the air rolling in is muggy and thick in her throat.

—

On his third and last day of suspension, he texts her to buy a bottle of soy sauce.

No thoughtful greeting. No please and thank you. She doesn't know how he can even do it, send her a photo like _that_ and then talk about _soy sauce_ without even a mention about… the sheer delinquency of it all infuriates her to no end!

In response, she sends him a million knife and skull emojis, and almost trips over a chair.

When she reaches his apartment, the door swings open and he's standing there as if he'd been waiting for her. Sophie thrusts out the konbini bag, his homework packet and the soy sauce inside.

"That's like two hundred yen, right?" He fishes around his pocket and drops two coins in her awkwardly outstretched hand. "Come in. I'm making dinner."

Yes, she can see that. A pot on the stove is bubbling. The rice cooker is beeping. Sliced vegetables sit on the plastic cutting board. The delinquent is most definitely making dinner. Sophie isn't quite sure why that matters to _her_, but then Bepo is padding up to her and demanding pets.

Law says, "Help me clean."

She stares.

"You like cleaning, right?" he adds, tossing vegetables in a hot pan. The oil snaps.

"…Do I _like_ bringing order to a universe that grows more entropic every day? Is that _really_ the question?"

His shoulders shift like he's holding in a laugh.

Sophie stares again.

His request, genuinely, is to help him clean the kitchen as he cooks.

She looks around at the clutter. It wouldn't be a difficult task to tidy up. She sets down her backpack, glancing at him warily. His back is turned to her as he opens the soy sauce and dumps it in the pan. Bepo is tired of wagging his tail for her attention and pads back to Law, and the lanky boy squats down to accept nuzzles.

So, okay. Sophie supposes she can put the dishes in the dishrack back in their cabinet. Then she sees old food stains on the counter… that's gotta go, too…

She ends up sweeping the kitchen, vacuuming the living area, and rearranging his entire pantry, while remarking to Law that she expects the fire alarm to go off at any moment. He tells her not to worry, he'll save her from any fires by dropping her ass out into the alley. This dissolves into an argument on how long chicken is supposed to cook for, and Sophie launches on a ten-minute tangent about the tragedy of not owning a meat thermometer. Law times her on his phone's stopwatch.

She is _so_ tempted to bonk him with his spatula.

When he finishes cooking, it smells good. He can make properly-seasoned chicken veggie omurice. Who knew?

They sit at the kotatsu on opposite sides, Bepo eating out of his bowl between them. Law puts saran wrap over the third plate. He tells her to eat first; his dad doesn't come back for a while. He spreads out his math homework and starts on it.

Sophie doesn't move. "Why?"

His spoon stops halfway to his mouth. "Why what."

"Why… _this_."

"You cleaned my apartment. It's repayment."

Yeah, she highly doubts that.

Still, free dinner. Her curiosity gets the better of her.

Sophie lifts the spoon, and pauses. He is watching her with a certain unsettling level of intenseness. "…Is it poisoned?"

Law gives her a withering stare. "Fuck you," he replies, and digs into his own omurice.

She takes a bite. Okay, fine. Fine, she can admit it's decent. Good, even. There are about ten different levels of cosmic weirdness to this, but she decides to focus on eating.

He scratches his shirt under the collar. "Sorry if it's hot, the AC's janky."

It _is_ hot. The windows are open, city air that smells faintly of car exhaust wafting in, and the ceiling fan is on, but the heat from the stove lingers. Sophie shrugs. Inwardly, she's tempted to undo a button on her uniform. But she would _never_ in her current company.

But Law has no such qualms. He sticks his spoon in his mouth and pulls his shirt over his head. He wads it up and throws it on the couch and settles back, his torso and arms inked everywhere, his thin silver chain hanging around his neck.

Then he opens up the science podcast that Sophie listens to every week, and puts the newest episode on in the background.

A grain of rice falls from her lip. The train rumbles past. If she can't concentrate, that has nothing to do with the shirtless delinquent doing his homework. She's listening to the podcast hosts talk about the migration pattern of arctic terns and the night is uncomfortably warm, that's all.

—

After a long day of work, Rocinante walks up the apartment stairs, throwing his jacket over his shoulders and loosening his tie. The evening setting over the neighborhood is quiet and tranquil, a rarity in this corner of the city, and he slouches into his apartment with a yawn…

…and sees Law sitting with a girl, doing homework.

Rocinante straightens up so fast he smacks his head on the doorframe. Bepo jumps up on his legs, barking.

"Hey, Roci," his teenager greets. "Welcome home."

"Good evening," the girl says with a small, polite bow.

"Your dinner's in the fridge," Law adds. "I cooked. She cleaned."

Rocinante looks at much tidier his apartment and almost falls flat on his face. "Sorry—who? What? How? Why?"

He thinks he should be worried. He furtively checks her school uniform for any sign of disarray—nope, she's fine—but Law must be out of his mind, going bare-chested in front of a girl? He tries to telepathically communicate to his deadpan teenager that the least he could do is have _some_ propriety—

The girl stands and introduces herself. "I'm our class representative. Tra…" She clears her throat, and says with some difficultly, "this guy helped me out and I was the reason why he got in trouble. The least I could do is make sure he does his homework while he's suspended."

"How kind of you," Rocinante manages to gasp, blinking at her.

"Is it. Is it really."

"_Law_—"

"My presence is a gift," she declares with an equally flat look, like she wants to say something nasty but is holding her tongue.

"I, I hope my kid hasn't caused you too much trouble," Rocinante continues as he puts his briefcase down, immediately trips over it, and stumbles into the wall.

She shakes her head. "He's been causing me precisely the exact amount of trouble I am equipped to deal with. Also, I believe I have your slippers. I was just about to leave, anyway." She packs up her things and exchanges Rocinante's slippers for her shoes. "It's a pleasure meeting you, Roci-san."

"Ah, yes! Nice meeting you, too!" Then, as she opens the door, he hisses, "Law. Law. When is she coming back."

"I'll walk you to the station," Law says, also getting up.

Rocinante yells, "Wear a goddamn shirt, please!"

He does, shooting him a dry look that is the universal look for, _Alright, Dad. Shit._

Rocinante picks up the large fluffy dog and holds him in his arms, and they peek over the door, watching the two teenagers head down the apartment stairs. He looks at Bepo and Bepo looks at him, and they silently confer on the suspicions of omurice.

—

"Your dad's nice. It's confusing. I thought he'd be like you."

She voices this thought as they turn the corner down a side street; his neighborhood is all utility poles and trains full of tired commuters flashing through the night. He was younger than she expected, too. To be honest, Rocinante could've been Law's older brother.

Law cups his hands around his mouth and lights a cigarette. "Roci gave me shit for this suspension."

"As he should."

"Got so heated he tripped off the balcony and landed in the dumpster."

"You're kidding."

He shakes his head.

Sophie's shoulders lift as she tries and fails to stifle her laughter. Then she feels the weight of his gaze again, and her smile drops and she telling him curtly to finish his homework when he gets back. Law remarks that he's never met anyone as obsessed with school as her.

"I have to be," she shoots back, hugging her arms even though she's not cold. "I have big plans for my future. I don't expect you to understand. You don't even care about your potential. You're wasting it away as we speak."

"Yeah, maybe." He sticks one hand in his pocket, the other flicking ash from his cigarette. "I've always found it a little tedious. School. Life. Existing."

There's a gently dead bent to his voice. She tells herself not to mind it.

"When are you going to get bored of this?" A tinge of desperation laces through her words. She can't help it.

His neighborhood is all dogs barking through thin walls and muffled shouts, cigarette packs crushed to the asphalt and humming window AC units. The neon glow from a liquor store at the corner passes over his face, lighting him in acid-blues and dark-pinks. Her buttoned-up shirt feels too tight, suddenly. It's suffocating her.

"Class rep," he says, "I don't think you could bore me if you tried."

As he speaks, the pale fumes escape his mouth like a ghost.

The dark, glistening street drips in neon oil.

When Sophie stumbles onto her train, she finds herself desperately loosening her tie and gasping for air that doesn't taste like secondhand smoke.

At home, as she pulls her uniform off, she gets another whiff of hot grease and the indefinable musky sticky scent of his apartment on her clothes. She takes a quick, ice-cold shower, then draws a bath and is about to step in when her phone buzzes on the sink.

**The Worst** (9:22 pm)  
_home safe?_

He's terrible, but she's never had a classmate who asks about her like he does. _Maybe my standards are extremely low_, she thinks._ Or maybe I just don't have standards at all_. Sophie lights a cigarette and slips lower in her bathtub, her curls pulled up in a loose bun and her phone in her other hand.

**Sophie** (9:23 pm)  
_Yes. I'm taking a bath now_.

Little typing dots.

They stop. They start again. They stop again.

**The Worst** (9:25 pm)  
_that's good  
__bet you've never relaxed a day in your entire life_

She waits for an additional remark, a sly request for a photo of her shampoo bottle or something. He hasn't asked for a photo for a while now. His torture quota is surely running low.

But she gets nothing of the sort. Maybe this is a little too dangerous for Law. He's careful. He's never asked for a photo that went even near the realm of potential jail time.

Taking another drag of her cigarette, Sophie opens her camera and takes a photo of the other end of her bathtub. It's from a very anonymous angle. Only her legs are in view; knees up, feet propped up on the edge next to her bottles of hair products and body wash. Her thumb hovers over the send button. This is very likely going to have the exact opposite effect of boring him.

The idea of that makes her stomach tighten a way she can't explain. Maybe it's anger. Maybe it's the notion of being seen as some kind of amusement. If he wants to be vile, so can she.

She sends it.

**Sophie** (9:28 pm)  
_Trade._

She doesn't have to wait long. Instead of a photo, a video appears.

She plays it.

A tattooed hand opens the faucet of a bathroom shower. It's cramped just like everything else in that apartment. The video shakes as he steps in, angling his phone away from the water and to a small window crammed with soap, shaving cream, and razors. "_You caught me just in time for a shower_," comes his disembodied voice._ "Look, you can see the downtown skyline from here_."

City lights and a glowing horizon. It's beautiful.

Then the camera flips to the front view as he sets it against the window, and Sophie almost drops her phone. The water pelts him, running down his shoulders and overly-tattooed chest and… she can't see anything beneath that. She's grateful she can't because she is positive the only thing he has on is the delicate silver chain around his neck, but maybe not knowing is worse than knowing.

"_Nice view,_" he murmurs,_ "right?_"

The video ends. She sets her phone aside.

She sinks slowly down in her bath until she is entirely submerged, eyes squeezed shut, and holds her breath for as long as she can.

—

INTERLUDE: GRAND THEFT AUTO

—

Eustass Kidd can typically be found working in the metalworking classroom, which is also the usual haunt of Penguin and Shachi, and Franky and Usopp from Luffy's gang. He's there after school, dismantling metal parts in bulky gloves and baggy pants that desperately need a belt, and thankfully he's alone.

She's pretty sure that car engine he's working on is directly related to an arrest bulletin for a stolen Ferrari she saw on the news.

Sophie plants her hands on her hips. "Killer turned your math homework in. But you could've at least _tried_ in your other subjects."

Kidd wipes his face and smears grease over his cheek. As crude as he is, he's won engineering competitions with parts he's stolen from junkyards. He's a shoo-in for the best engineering programs in the country… if he isn't arrested first, that is. "Yeah, whatever. Look, you better watch yourself around Trafalgar. You don't know how nasty he can be."

"I am well acquainted with that."

His eyes narrow. Something about this conversation changes tracks. "Sometimes me and Killer hunt pervs on the subway." Kidd lifts a brawny fist. "They're juice pouches. Punch 'em and they squirt blood. Fun for the whole family. You get it?"

"There's… nothing shady going on between me and _him_." She wonders if Kidd and Law might share more qualities than they care to admit—and then reminds herself they're not good qualities. But they're… not all terrible, either. "Anyway, I thought you two were friends. Delinquent solidarity."

"We ain't friends," Kidd scoffs. "Even if we were, I'd still woulda hit him. Something about his face."

"I understand what you mean, but he got you pretty good, too."

"Shut up. Pass me the torque."

She lifts up the torque wrench and considers it. Sophie delicately steps forward to where Kidd is hunkered down. He is eyebrowless and glaring.

"I hope the two of you have learned your lesson. It's not good to fight on school property." Sophie stands directly over him and braces one foot against a pile of metal junk, raising the tool in her hand. "If you try to threaten me again, I will personally pull down your pants, take off my shoe, and smack you until you cry."

Kidd lifts his goggles up and eyes her. "Class rep, you got a _mouth_."

She gives him the torque—

"Future tip, don't stand like a gangster in a fucking skirt. Unless you want me to see up—"

—but not before whacking him over the head with it.

"Juice pouch," she says.

—

II: SHE WANTS MY MONEY

—

In most schools, a suspension caused by a fistfight between two students would've been a spectacle.

In Hell School, no one bats an eye.

That is for the best. Sophie is perfectly fine with life going back to normal, with normal delinquents to lecture. She is pretty sure Usopp's the one drawing _Sogeking! The man from sniper island (it's in your heart)_ graffiti on the school walls. Someone accidentally sets the Home Ec room on fire, which is bad enough, but then she catches Sanji interrogating a group of terrified first-year punks with his kicks.

Plus, for some reason Ace finds it funny to send her selfies of him, Sabo, and Luffy driving away on his motorbike while a gas station burns behind them. She stares at it for five minutes before realizing it's not photoshopped.

**Sophie** (11:18 am)  
_PLEASE STOP SENDING ME PHOTOS OF YOU COMMITTING CRIMES?_

**Freckle Monkey** (11:21 am)  
_[crying laughter emoji]_

She might have to throttle Ace at some point.

But Sophie has other fish to fry.

She gets the sense of something much more dangerous than the Monkey Brothers brewing when she hears about yet another group of third-year boys being extorted for money. She is pretty sure she knows where the root of the problem lies, and struts off in search of her.

Nami is standing in line at the school's bakery, stylish sneakers and hoop earrings and disheveled orange hair that smells perpetually of mikans.

"We need to talk," Sophie says authoritatively, and Nami raises her brows.

The thing is, she has quite a bit of unspoken respect towards Nami. Nami is generally sweet—on girls, at least, and the guys she's friends with. She's also an honor student, and more impressively, she keeps her gang under control, and her gang is also Luffy's gang. That means Nami is some kind of superhuman mutant.

But Nami is also sneaky and diabolical. Her thick black notebook is stuffed full of ominous notes and reminders of debt interest. And somehow she's even lulled perfectly genteel girls like Vivi and Conis under her spell! There are even rumors of Tashigi, the student council president herself, going easy on Nami when she gets in trouble. Sophie cannot abide by this. Just because Nami is all… intelligent and _bouncy_ doesn't mean she has the right to be treated different from any other delinquent!

"I know," Sophie says, "what you are doing."

Nami gives her a lofty look. "Oh? Please, clue me in."

She sweats. "You've a-always treated me kindly, Nami. But you're also s-squeezing money out of our classmates. I won't tolerate it."

"Who told you that?"

"It's all over school!"

When Nami pouts, it almost looks like a smile. She twists a lock of orange around her finger and sticks out her bottom lip, chocolate-brown eyes shining. "Hey, why are you being so mean to me? You'll make me cry."

Sophie is speechless. Nami takes the bread and coffee sitting at the pick-up station and saunters away.

"One-shot KO," says Pudding from behind the counter. "Pathetic, class rep."

Sophie looks around. "…Where's my bread and coffee?"

Pudding points at the redhead making a fast getaway.

"That delinquent!" Sophie yelps. She inhales like a bullfrog and throws her hands up. "That… thief!" The gears in her mind shift. Something _must_ be done.

—

'Something' turns out to be 'stalk—no, spy—no, _tracking_ Nami with a pair of binoculars'.

This is not exactly Sophie's proudest moment. She is hiding behind telephone poles, wearing a surgical face mask and observing the other girl from a safe distance. This would get her arrested in any other scenario, but it's for the sake of the greater good! She has to know if Nami is extorting other students! She is simply trying to keep the peace!

Sophie follows Nami on the subway train (while hiding behind Shirahoshi and her brothers) to a trendy dessert shop in Shibuya. It's owned by Pudding's family. Nami sits alone at a table and orders a slice of cake and an orange cream soda. When Katakuri comes by with his notepad, Sophie furtively gets a fruit parfait for herself and watches the other girl over an upside-down menu.

Nami checks out a Crimin clothing store. Sophie is not far behind, sneaking below the counter where Camie is at her part-time job. Nami eats at a takoyaki street stall and talks with the owner, a young man with a rather octopus-like face. Sophie grabs a bit of takoyaki, too. Nami strolls through a park and comes across Usopp; she waves at him and presses her finger to her lips. Sophie, meanwhile, has to frantically elude three grade school boys waving paper swords and yelling about a suspicious lady.

She trails Nami into a quiet neighborhood filled with an unusual amount of mikan trees. She is slowly beginning to admit to herself that there's nothing suspicious about Nami's afterschool activities and perhaps she miscalculated—when Nami whirls around. She strides to the telephone pole Sophie's hiding behind.

Sophie immediately spins and runs face-first into a fence.

Before she can collect herself, Nami is in front of her, leaning forward with a dark, catty smile. "Hi, you."

She shields her face. "Sorry, have we, um, met before?"

"I should think so, class rep. I mean, I put all this effort into our date."

Sophie stares at her. _Date_? She thinks back to their afternoon, and her jaw drops. "I was not aware of this happening," she squeaks.

"I thought we had a nice time together." Her eyes glint. "Can we end the date here, or are you looking for something more?"

With a gurgled, unintelligible answer, Sophie slides away from her and runs home.

When she gets home, after screaming into her pillow and rolling around her bed for a mortifying amount of time, she drags herself back up. Tiredly contemplating her failures of the day, Sophie pulls off her uniform, taking out her keys and wallet from her pocket… and pauses.

Her wallet feels lighter.

She opens it.

The cigarette in her mouth threatens to drop. "That thief!"

—

A blue-haired young woman answers the door, and Sophie freezes in the middle of furiously jamming her finger on the doorbell. Their neighbor, an old man with a scarred face, peers out of his house to yell at Sophie for making a ruckus so late at night.

"I got it, Gen-san," the young woman calls, and evaluates her. Before Sophie can even introduce herself, she shouts, "Nami! It's one of your girlfriends again!"

"_I'm not_… oh, never mind." Self-respect these days is a lost cause.

"Can you be quieter? Mom's sleeping." Slippered footsteps come downstairs and Nami appears, rubbing her eyes. "Oh," she says, startled. "Class rep."

"Come with me, or I will run us both over with a truck."

"…How would that even—"

Sophie drags her by scruff of her shirt.

It's Nami's turn to pretend she has no clue what Sophie's doing. Right across the street, Sophie finds a bench beneath the mikan trees and firmly sits Nami down.

She'd been thinking about something on the way over, and starts off with saying, "I know I was in the wrong to follow you, and I accept that you taking my money is a little bit deserved, but _you still_ need to cut it out with the money shakedowns. That fosters the opposite of school spirit, you know!"

Nami draws her legs up on the bench. A car passes by down the quiet street, its headlights passing over her face and illuminating the swoopy blue tattoo on her shoulder. She sighs. "This about those third-years, right?"

It turns out that a group of third-year boys were giving Lola a hard time. Nami shows her the text messages between her and Lola, and as Sophie reads them, her heart sinks but she understands. Delinquents give Hell School a bad name, but bullies do just as much damage.

"Nami… do you… only go after troublemakers?"

"Don't tell anyone," she warns. "I have a reputation to maintain."

No wonder Nami's capable of controlling the chaos that is Luffy's gang. She's conniving, but she also uses her powers for… relative good. For semi-decency. Sophie tells her as much and apologizes for thinking the worst of her. She looks up nervously, fidgeting with her hair over her shoulders.

Nami tilts her head, blinking.

"B-but considering who you hang out with, my misgivings aren't irrational!" Sophie adds in a fluster.

"Well, of _course_. Luffy would be delighted to hear that." Nami shoots her a funny look. "You know you could've just asked me about it instead of following me like a creep."

"I—well—yes, I just—for the good of society at large, I was—" She tries and fails to start a sentence so badly that Nami curls up and giggles. Sophie hides her face in her elbows and pouts in embarrassment, but at least Nami has the good humor to forgive her.

Nami kicks back on the bench, and they talk about school for a little while longer (she's going to be a climatologist, and Sophie brightens and nods fervently in approval; finally, a sensible career goal), and then she casually tells Sophie about her scam to catfish money out of unsavory business moguls.

"Maybe you should rethink that idea," Sophie advises.

"Oh, I've already made a million yen," Nami says cheerily. "Don't worry, my mom's a retired cop so I know how to keep my nose clean. I plan on setting her up for retirement before I head to uni. I'm going to take Mom and Nojiko on vacation, too. My mom planted these trees, actually. All along this boulevard. She's done really nice things for the whole community."

"Ah," she realizes, "no wonder you smell like…"

Nami smiles, scooting closer. "Like?"

Nami is conniving, and maybe she doesn't use her powers for good all the time. Maybe not even most of the time. Her eyes are brown like dark copper and her hair is about every shade of fire and cider.

Sophie says flatly, "My money."

Her smile curves wider. "Aw. You're learning."

In one smooth move, her wallet is in the pocket of her skirt again, and Nami's hand is on her neck.

"Sorry, I already spent the money that I took from you earlier," Nami tells her, and then touches her lips very lightly to the tip of Sophie's nose, and grins at the resulting squeak. "Let's say that makes us even, okay?"

Sophie's nose scrunches up and she blinks wildly. As Nami gets up to leave, she can do nothing but stare.

She looks back, smiling through the blooming mikan trees. "How shameless, class rep. Letting a delinquent steal a kiss." She winks, making a money gesture with her hand. "Normally I'd charge interest."

It takes about ten seconds for that sink in.

Sophie clutches her nose, bright pink. "You _thief_!"

—

III: STATION SCUMBAGS

—

She likes to think that she is a healthy individual, if you ignore her system dependence on caffeine and nicotine. She eats her greens and resists carbonated drinks and junk food better than most seventeen-year-olds. She knows how to keep a balanced diet.

But there are nights when her stomach rumbles, breaking her concentration on homework, and she decides that she's too tired to cook. Sophie wants a cold iced latte and a greasy paper box filled with fried chicken.

Tonight is that night.

She takes a break from work and heads to a convenience store at a subway station downtown. (Because every city has its nooks and crannies and best places to buy _insert food item here_; if she's going out of her way to get some fried chicken, it better be good.)

However, a hindrance swiftly shows its nasty three-headed face.

They're hanging out next to the convenience store, most definitely plotting something nefarious. For some reason, Luffy is sitting inside a shopping cart. Kidd is playing on his phone, and Law is unconcernedly moving Luffy's cart with his foot side-to-side. The subway station air is stale and recycled, and the fluorescent lights bounce off the tiled floor where commuters are walking to and fro.

Those three boys together is cause for alarm and possibly a police warrant. But Sophie's had far too many cumbersome things to deal with lately, so she averts her eyes and keeps walking. They're facing away from her, and she catches bits and pieces of conversation.

She can do it. She can make it to the store without them noticing. She's in a plain t-shirt, shorts, and Birkens, which is to say she doesn't look remotely like her usual proper self in school. She'll just sneak by and…

"He took the L," Law's saying, gesturing at Kidd.

"You backed off first when the teachers broke us up," Kidd snaps. "A real champ would've kept it up and smoked ya. Which I did."

"You know what," laughs Luffy, "you're both pretty dumb." As two irritated boys round on him, something else catches his amusement. "Oi, Thick Brows! Watcha up to?"

Sophie's fist would probably bounce off that infallibly sunny smile, but she imagines it anyway.

"None of your business," she says snootily, hurrying into the convenience store.

The automatic rush of the store's AC hits her and cools away the summer sweat. She hustles to grab her snacks. Her phone buzzes in her pocket. A flush creeps up the back of her neck, one that will not go away even in the air-conditioned store, and she reluctantly checks it.

**The Worst** (6:38 pm)  
_pic of what you're buying_

She considers sending him a photo of her middle finger. But that would delight him. She'd never hear the end of it. Sophie takes a photo as she waits in line, then adds, _What are the three of you planning?_

**The Worst** (6:40 pm)  
_nationwide political upheaval_

**The Worst** (6:40 pm)  
_joining?_

**Sophie** (6:40 pm)  
_I'd rather eat my own arm, thanks._

**The Worst** (6:40 pm)  
_you'll get indigestion_

She heads out with her purchased items, determined not to pay attention to those troublemakers of Hell School. They're watching for her this time. Luffy's gangly legs sticks out over the shopping cart. Their soft drinks are lukewarm, melting a sticky ring on the ground. Advertisements for fancy cars and fancy watches run on the screens behind the hoodlums.

"What'd you buy, Thick Brows?" Luffy launches himself out of his shopping cart. "Can I have some?"

Sophie is so flustered she gives him a piece of her fried chicken and shoos him away. She almost trips over her sandals.

"Class rep." The silver rings on Law's knuckles flash as he knocks his hand against Kidd's arm. "Heard you threatened to cut Eustass's balls off if he gets in a fight again."

Kidd rolls his skateboard. "She basically did. Class rep didn't do that to you?"

"No." His eyes glint at her as she passes by. "She was meaner."

Sophie stiffens as she walks past them. Her iced latte drips condensation in her hand.

But she can't resist glancing over her shoulder, as if pulled by an irritating magnet.

Law must've been waiting for that, because he lifts his phone up so she can see it. His home screen background is the photo of her bare legs stretched over her bathtub, water dripping between her knees and down her calves. Her ankles, feet, and toes glisten on the edge of the ceramic tub.

When she took that photo, it looked perfectly innocent; her body is just _her body_, her legs are just _her legs_, there is nothing remotely sensual about any of her longsuffering, decaffeinated atoms. But in his hands, knowing that he looks at it every time he opens his phone, makes that photo appear almost…

She cannot leave fast enough.

—

End-of-term exams are coming, and Sophie is studying nonstop in the relentless heat.

She tells herself to suck it up. Once it's summer holiday, she'll be free. She'll have enough time to do whatever she wants.

She studies on the crowded train compartment that she takes to school. Even early in the morning, it's so muggy that the pages of her book stick together. As the day of judgement (exams) draw near, she arrives to class with her hair pulled up in unruly knots and her eyes bloodshot. Her entire body is a stress headache.

Even Law pays attention. In the middle of a lecture, her phone brightens with a text.

**The Worst** (9:24 am)  
_you look like hell_

She would normally _never_ text in the middle of class, but the absolute gall makes her—

**Sophie** (9:24 am)  
_And you look like you were birthed from the devil's butthole._

**Sophie** (9:24 am)  
_What is your point?_

Okay, maybe she snapped a little hard on that one.

With cruel consistency, he tells her to send him photos of her breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's ridiculous. When she's chugging her sixth cup of coffee for the day, she doesn't want to be interrupted mid-existential crisis with a reminder to '_drink some fucking water and eat a goddamn carb_'. Who does he think he is, trying to police her diet? If she wants to curl up and cry due to stomach pain from all the caffeine, that's her business, okay?

But he is persistent. He wakes her up every morning with a stupid text about her breakfast. She'll snap a photo of some leftover dinner, or, more frequently, an onigiri she bought from a convenience store on her way to the subway. Dinner is the worst. Dinner is when she's in the middle of studying, and that's when he inevitably texts, breaking her concentration.

She drags herself to the kitchen to muster up some measly dinner. And water. Law always asks about water. _Who does he think he is_, Sophie grumbles to herself, and considers sending a photo of a glass half-full of water before dumping it in the sink.

But she doesn't. She drinks the dang water.

The hunger for fried chicken hits again during a thirty-hour no-sleep studying marathon.

She sees him again in the train station, outside the convenience store with the best fried chicken. Law, Penguin, Shachi, all loitering around There's hardly any relief from the heat, even in the early evening; the air is stale and stuffy with all the crowded commuters. Sophie snaps at them to go home and study for their exams.

Naturally, they laugh at her.

But Law catches her on the way out of the store. He shoves an ice-cold bottle of water it in her hand. She jerks so fast she almost drops it.

"Drink it," he says, and then returns to his crew before she can pay him back by chucking coins at his head.

On the walk home, Sophie passes the bottle between her fevered hands until it turns lukewarm.

Later that night, she spins around her chair, holding a pen on her upper lip like a moustache. After taking a quick smoke break at her open window, she checks her phone—no new messages—and goes back to studying. Energy drinks and cups of coffee litter her desk, along with an empty bottle of water.

—

Final exams are over, she aces all her tests with flying colors, and she sleeps for the next two days.

Then, Sophie spends the start of summer holiday melting in her bed.

She lies on top of the covers, sweating through her underwear. It's finally break, so she should be doing… fun things. Relaxing things. She checks her phone again. No new messages. Even the student gov group chat is quiet now that summer has started and they're all off going on adventures and doing other… normal teenage hullabaloo.

Going to the beach. Going to house parties. Traveling. Hm.

(She would've thought _he'd_ at least text. Not that she wants him to. But it would've been a prime opportunity to brag about her grades.

She's certainly not going to text him first.)

All she does is stare at her ceiling until the dewy morning light becomes the insistent heat of a July sunset. She's overused her brain so much that now it's just a big empty tank of nothing, useless neurons flopping about like sad, desiccated jellyfish.

At night, it hits her. Sophie is suddenly overcome with craving.

She wants fried chicken. She wants bags and bags of savory chips. She wants ice cream. After suddenly being released from the boiling pressure cooker of final exams, she wants every terrible awful thing she knows will be bad for her body.

It's fitting, then, that when she slouches to the convenience store, she sees _them_ in their usual spot in the train station.

It's a whole freaking congregation.

Luffy's crew, picking sticky ice cubes out of their soda drinks and chucking them down each other's shirts. Over Vivi's shoulder, Nami grins and waves at her. Law is watching what might've been a surgery dissection on his phone, or just a video of someone screaming. Penguin and Shachi are pouring all their money in a gatcha machine.

What is the point of dallying around in the subway station? They're not even _doing_ anything.

She makes it obvious that she is avoiding their ruffian milieu. Law calls out to her, asking how her summer break's going.

"It is perfectly adequate," Sophie sniffs. She did nothing all day and then had to deal with a panic attack because she did nothing. Now she's going to stuff her face with fried chicken. Life is _fine_.

"Spent the whole day sleeping?" It is a light, perfectly innocent question, yet blatantly about her appearance.

"What? No." She tugs on the back of her shorts, pulling it lower. They're tiny and cotton and perfect for the summer, which means they are entirely inappropriate for tattooed boys to look at her in. "I was… doing things. Rearranging my bookshelf. Laundry. Played some drums."

Law stuffs his phone in his jeans, his gaze locked on hers. "Sounds fun."

"So much fun." She shifts her weight, sandals scuffing on the ground. The AC in the station must be broken, because it's stuffier than normal. Her curls can't even be wrangled into a ponytail, and they're frizzing over her shoulders. But it doesn't matter; she should be going inside the convenience store, not standing here. "My life is a rollercoaster of constant excitement. I saw a snail on my bedroom window this morning."

He steps closer, a small grin on his face. The unforgiving press of the heat creeps down her spine in droplets of sweat. She shifts her weight again. A question gets choked up in her throat, and she is certain it's _what sort of hooliganry are you up to_ and not _why haven't you texted me today?_

Mostly certain.

At least half.

And then it happens: yet another hazard of hanging around delinquents. Which Sophie honestly should've been prepared for.

An authoritative figure comes marching down the tunnel and yells at their group to stop loitering around.

Luffy and Usopp stop doodling various pirate skulls on the wall. The former jumps up and waves. "Smokey!"

The white-haired, heavily-smoking officer stops in his tracks. Sophie would learn later that this police officer has had several miserable experiences chasing after a certain sunny, havoc-wreaking boy. But she doesn't know that at present. She just looks at the officer, whose teeth is grinding his cigar so hard ash is falling from his mouth, and frowns slightly, while Law simply says, "Shit."

"Cop!" Zoro roars, waving his gang forward. "Haul ass!"

And then a tattooed hand is on her wrist and they're running through the subway.

Her sandals are slapping against the tiled floor and Law is dodging around surprised commuters, pulling her close. "Wait," the word leaves her lungs breathlessly, still in the process of half-registering the jolt of momentum her body is in, "wait! Slow down! It's just the police!"

"_Are you dumb_?" they roar back.

"Teenage vandals," she hears the cop shout into his radio, "I'm pursuing on foot."

"Oh my god," Sophie hisses between her teeth, digging her nails into Law's palm. She's definitely guilty by association, isn't she?

With practiced ease, the delinquents jump the turnstiles. Even Nami in her high-heeled boots. (She then turns to help Vivi, whose delight for shenanigans does not fit the daughter of an Egyptian ambassador _at all_.) Law braces one hand on the metal machine, kicking up over it and landing on the other side. Sophie stops, fumbling through her pockets for her subway card. They can't expect her to…

He extends his hand. "Jump!"

_Screw it_, she thinks, and does.

Law grabs her around the waist as she flounders over the turnstile and sets her down, stumbling, and then they're off running again. Zoro and Luffy are leading the horde, hollering for people to make way. She can't believe this. Her heart is racing, pumping through her ears, she has _no idea_ where she's going, and she is deliriously okay with that.

They're racing down the stairs—jumping in Luffy's case; screaming in Usopp's—as the train _blaaaares_ onto the platform, and people are shouting in surprise as the group of teenagers barrel past them and through the sliding doors.

"Ha!" says Shachi. "Slow bastard."

"Spoke too soon." Penguin points at the grey-haired police officer making it onto the train right before the doors close.

There's a mad dash to run through the swaying compartments, shoving past alarmed passengers. She's squeezed right up against Law, and he holds her by the waist and seizes Penguin by the shirt, who in turn grabs Shachi's sleeve as they run like a human chain. She braces herself against him as the train turns a sharp corner, and it slows down as it arrives at its next stop. The doors open as the officer fights through the crowd towards them.

"I am not going to jail," she chants under her breath, "I am not going to jail, _I got nineties on all my exams and I am not going to jail_."

"That's the spirit, class rep," Law says, and she _swears_ in the chaos of everyone shouting to run, she hears him laugh.

They run up another flight of stairs—panting in the humid heat and yelling at each other not to slow down—and jump over another turnstile. Sophie's ready this time. She leaps over it and grabs onto Law's shoulders to brace her fall.

He takes her hand again and she scrambles after them through the maze of subway tunnels, the eternal construction going on at various points, and onto another train going who-knows-where.

Like runners barreling past the finish line in the world's most chaotic race, they crash through the doors, alarming the small handful of passengers in the compartment. There's no sign of the cop as the doors close, and the delinquents let out a raucous cheer as the train peels off into the night.

Sophie takes deep, shocked breaths. She doesn't even have the mental coherency to say anything. The rest of them are laughing, dancing, hi-fiving each other and playing the horrendously shaky videos they took of the chase. Here is she is, almost having a panic attack because _they just evaded the police_, and it's just another day for them.

The train emerges out from a tunnel and passes above ground, speeding along the coast of the bay.

The view is breathtaking. On the other side of the bay, the city glows and shines and shimmers over the water. It is an infinite dance of lights.

Law leans against a metal pole, catching his breath, and as she looks at their reflection in the smudged window, it only just hits her that she's still holding his hand. He doesn't seem to notice. Or maybe he does. He loosens his tight grip on her hand, but his thumb is carefully tracing the tips of her fingers. The warm metal of his rings press against her palm.

She pulls her hand away and sits by Vivi on the bench.

"Wasn't that delightful?" Vivi says with flushed cheeks, fanning herself.

"You're all insane," says the other girl.

—

Lurching into her bedroom, she's exhausted but somehow also giddy and _restless_.

She takes a quick shower and falls on her bed, lights off, wet hair air-drying. It's only the beginning of summer break, but she feels as if this high will last her until school starts again. She can't believe she jumped those turnstiles. She can't believe she ran to evade a cop. Sophie stares up, feeling as if that familiar view of her ceiling, with a poster of famous women scientists taped there, looks entirely different from that afternoon.

She took photos of the late-night train ride. They're stupid, really. Badly shot, because she wanted to hide the fact that she was taking them. There's a blurry photo of the ocean view, Luffy's face half-visible. The orange of Nami's hair next to the blue of Vivi's. Penguin and Shachi sprawled over a bench. Tattooed hands lightly curled around a pole.

She should've taken better ones. But they're nice anyway.

A message pops up.

**The Worst** (12:23 am)  
_home safe?_

The restless feeling in her grows. She starts to text, _You ask me that too much. You tell me to drink water too much. Stop being so nice. You're supposed to be blackmailing me. I'm supposed to hate you, not hate how much you make me feel alive._

Backspace, backspace, backspace. Delete.

**Sophie** (12:25 am)  
_Yes. You?_

Law sends over a photo of Bepo. His wet nose is pressed up against the camera. They're on his bed, a dim light coming from a desk lamp off to the side.

**The Worst** (12:25 am)  
_trade_

Sophie sends over a professional photo of her stuffed animals all gathered around for a meeting on rising sea levels (sometimes she pretends they're world leaders attending the United Nations, but that's a secret she'll never share with anyone). She doesn't know why this would amuse him, unless he thinks it's torture for her. Little does he know; she doesn't mind it so much if it's a trade. And Law… clearly doesn't mind giving her something in return.

She reflects on this for a moment. The photo of him shirtless, the video of him in the shower… for a demon wearing human flesh, he's not very good at extortion. If anything, his lack of any genuine evil gives her a sense of relief in this text exchange. The idea is a little unsettling to imagine if she thinks about it too hard, but it's… starting to feel normal seeing the nickname she gave him appear on her screen.

Then she locks her phone and is determined to go to sleep.

Two minutes later, she opens her phone again. She texts him, _It's hot_. He texts back a water gun emoji.

She rolls on her belly, kicking up her legs.

**Sophie** (12:28 am)  
_I want fried chicken._

**The Worst** (12:28 am)  
_am i supposed to care_

**The Worst** (12:28 am)  
_but fine, text me your address and i'll come over with some_

_Hahahahahahahahahahaha,_ she types back angrily, face flushed. She also adds, _Don't be stupid, I'm not falling for that. Disgusting._

**The Worst** (12:29 am)  
_clever class rep_

**Sophie** (12:29 am)  
_Why are you still up?_

**The Worst** (12:29 pm)  
_too hot to sleep  
__listening to music_

He sends her a link. She opens it and is greeted with a music video shot on grainy 35 mm film, the aspect ratio reminding her of an old VHS movie. She thinks of Law listening to this song when he's up late at night, on his tiny balcony with the collapsible clothes drying rack hanging next to him, city lights glowing like stars.

She responds with a link to a song that she'd been listening to recently, and then around one am the conversation veers into the similarities between death metal and classical music. Around two am she teases him about the weird alt bands he favors and he snarks back, _as opposed to what, the bands old geezers like who preyed on teenagers and subsisted on cocaine?_ And she supposes, okay, he even knows his music history.

Around three, her eyelids start drooping.

**Sophie** (3:04 am)  
_I'm tired, but I still want to finish this discussion._

**The Worst** (3:04 am)  
_shit it's late. go to bed._

_Noooojjsk ksn sk_, she replies in the middle of falling asleep.

.

.

.

Class Representative Sophie's Delinquency Tally:

Counts of smoking: 3  
Threats of violence: 2  
Unsolicited bathing photos sent: 1  
Aggressively utilizing a wrench: 1  
People stalked: 1  
Visiting a classmate unannounced at night: 1  
Kiss stolen by a delinquent: 1  
Loitering with a group of delinquents: 1  
Evading a police officer: 1  
Turnstile jumping: 2  
Disturbing the peace: 1  
Texting a delinquent until you fall asleep: 1

Total: 16


	4. modern au: midwinter in four stanzas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> baby it's cold outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (moving some old mnp aus from ffn, don't mind me.)

* * *

_midwinter in four_ stanzas

* * *

.

**i. deck the halls**

.

Wintertime festivities are a quiet occasion in the Strangways-Trafalgar household (which isn't so much a _house_ as it is a cramped, single-bedroom apartment above a Chinese bakery, and they aren't so much a _household_ as they are two broke graduate students who found each other through Craigslist. _Wanted: Roommate, non-smoker, quiet. Must be able to ignore suspicious noises at night. Cannot ask questions about unconscious/bloodied person(s) seen around apartment. No sharing beer._

"Hi," said the cloud of smoke upon opening the door, a lit cigarette held snazzily between two fingertips, "so, I could get a search warrant slapped on this place because of your stupid ad, but I kind of need a place to hide—stay, I mean, stay. Anyway, you know me." She waved the smoke aside, and a shock of frizzy yellow hair and ocean eyes greeted him. "We have O-Chem together."

She shoved her foot between the door when he tried to slam it. It's been three years since then.)

Every day is hectic up until their actual holiday break begins. Exams, work, projects, papers. Sophie rolls out of bed for her 7 AM lab shift, grabs her coffee and mango slices to go, and gives Law's butt a firm kick to make sure he gets up before climbing down the fire escape to her moped (the front door being, of course, blocked by haphazard science experiments). Law makes coffee for three, swings by her work to drop off two, and spends all day at class and then his shift at the hospital. On some nights when they're both too tired to make food he'll hustle the cooks from the tiny French place down the street. But they get nicer as the holidays come around, and sometimes all Sophie has to do is look as sad and pathetic as possible and one of the chefs will sprout hearts for eyes and slip her a free bottle of Merlot.

When their finals wind down and they have a weekend to spare, they compromise on decorations. Sophie likes cheesy embellishments and explosions of glitter. Law likes his corners dark and menacing to brood in. He reasons that a tree would make their already cramped living situation even worse, so he buys a small poinsettia from the local supermarket, a bright red thing with gold foil. She lights a hanukiah by the window and hangs up fairy lights, blue tinsels, and reindeer garlands. (Christmas is _whatever_ but Santa is terrific; she aspires to break into as many houses as he does, worshipped by tiny humans who give you offerings of cookies and milk.)

It comes together in a semi-nice, eclectic sort of vibe: their apartment glows chocolate-chip, fresh-from-the-oven warm, and it makes her want to eat soba with the good dipping sauce, huddled under the canopy of a blanket fort, forever and ever.

.

**ii. a warm hearth**

.

Their first day of break is also the first day that it snows. Fort Sophie is an optimistic attempt, a big blanket draped over three chairs, textbooks holding it in place, in the alcove of the bedroom window. Law brings in hot apple cider and Sophie heats up sugar cookies using a blowtorch. She sticks her cold feet on Law's lap. Her sneaky toes crawl under his sweater, searching for the warmth of his stomach.

He glowers, but otherwise lets her use him as a personal foot heater. Law, Mighty Unmovable Mountain. You could stick a scalpel into the palm of his hand and he'd growl _is that the best you've got_ in the deepest, most toe-curling voice that makes you want to ask if you can do it again to his other hand, but _slower_.

Sophie flexes her toes against his abdomen. "A party? I dunno." She bites off the head of a Pillsbury snowman. "I do better mano-a-mano."

"When people are forced to talk to you."

"And can't escape or talk to someone else, exactly."

"I'm not really up for it, either. Besides, Penguin and Shachi are going to stumble in here stone-cold drunk and we have to make sure they don't set this place on fire like last time." Law sticks his head out the window, catching snowflakes on his tongue. White flakes fall across his hair. His black hair looks almost darkblue in certain light, like the bottom of a deep deep well where only fluorescent mushrooms and prehistoric kelp live. Sophie reaches up and brushes the snow from his forehead, then wriggles to peer out the window. The air is so cold she can smell it. "I'll text back Kid and Luffy."

She looks out into the bewintered city, the frosted roads and the people below wiping snow off their cars. Her breath comes out in big white puffs. She blows into his face, open-mouthed, hot and smelling like apple cider and old cigarettes. He lets her for a few moments. And then he wraps his freezing fingers around her waist, right on the skin.

"_Law_!"

Sophie beats his shoulders with her palms, wailing about the sanctity of warm flesh and betrayal of trust and _letgoletgoletgoooooo you big lame fart! _He is laughing helplessly, his face all chill from winterfrost and his nose runny from the cold, and she kisses him hard on his sticky-sweet mouth while reaching around for an unforgiving fistful of snow to shove in his face.

.

**iii. with a red bow-tie**

.

"Hai Xing gave us presents!"

Law looks up. "Who?"

"The guy who owns the bakery downstairs." She clambers in from the fire escape, shivering and slamming the window shut, and investigates the contents of her package. Pineapple bread, egg tart, rousong bun, boba tea. Their favorites. "He's right down the hall. Lived here three years and you never said hi?"

"I say hi." Law accepts an egg tart.

"Grunting when you pass by each other does not count."

"He gives me fortune cookies with the bad luck warnings in them. I'm pretty sure he thinks we make meth for a drug trafficking ring."

She hangs up her coat and sits next to him on the couch, texting Hippo—who is working with Doctors Without Borders in Swaziland, but not before vacationing in South Africa and sending her a picture of the orphanage he grew up in. "Why would you say that?"

"He asked me if we make meth for a drug trafficking ring."

"We should dress like Walt and Jesse and invite him over."

"Sounds good, yo."

"Does this make me Walt?"

"Well. Yeah. You're the one who actually knows how to make meth."

"That was _years _ago. I've turned over a new leaf." Sophie flips her hair back in some semblance of tumbling gold locks and her scarf gets caught on her wrist and she nearly chokes.

"…"

"I _have_."

"…"

"Gawd, that's your response to everything, isn't it?"

"Dot dot dot," says him.

He gets her a crate of illegal-to-own chemicals (there are blood stains on the side; she blushes to her ears, _how sweet_) and a pair of new mittens for Hannukah. Sophie admires her fuzzy Chopper Man mitts in the firelight and Law spends the rest of the evening playing with his handmade obsidian scalpel. (_Happy late Mawlid, you pineapple. Who wants to open holiday presents by themselves, anyway?_) They talk about birthright and hajj and pilgrimages. She is twenty-three with three more years to meet her motherland's eligibility requirements; Law is twenty-seven, and he's been to Mecca and Medina, a twofer on divinity. They're agnostic, most of the time. God is like the poinsettia on the kitchen table. They water it only when they remember, and yet, it persists.

.

**iv. the longest night of the year**

.

Law is twenty-seven, and Sophie can taste his melancholy. The cemetery he visits is a bleak field of white, weepy iron angels staring at you from beyond the grave, and she wants to string electric lights all over and holler loud enough to wake the dead, except it's not _appropriate_ only what's appropriate anyway when you're twenty-seven and you've got a trifecta of tattooed hearts to mourn the one you lost.

(_Except it doesn't ever make up for it_, she thinks heavily, leaning against a frost-bitten tree and watching Law kneel down on the snow, speaking softly—she can see the puffs of breath leaving his mouth—gold earrings and a black coat and blacker tattoos in the silent graveyard, hands empty but full of fiercely-whispered promises.)

Winter in the city is surreal. Sophie is pretty sure she bums a cigarette off a yellow-haired angel on the subway. Ghosts play for loose change and pocket-flint on the sidewalks, smog streams slowly by cathedral windows, and its bells toll a lonely staccato hymn that feels like the last vestige of an ancient hiemal ritual. Somebody somewhere is reciting _The woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep._ Getting lost is easy when everything's the same color. Adonai took their white-out marker and scribbled over the whole city, so she wears her most colorful socks as a homing device and navigates by candy-floss Christmas trees. _And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep_.

As promised, Penguin and Shachi stumble in from the fire escape, consumed by champagne-fizzy giggles. Bepo follows, a big white-haired boy with the sweetest eyes you've ever seen. They come in search of warmth and haul along presents: beer and hot melty cheese pizza, still steaming when she opens the box, and Law provides a tower of different-flavored rice balls, Sophie the lemon-meringue pie. Carolers come by and Bepo opens the window to sing along, his voice a lovely baritone lute that floats through the creak-hiss of steam radiators, until Shachi puts him in a headlock and hoots that he's upstaging those poor kids, _ya nerd_!

Law doesn't _get_ drunk, but when he does, he gets _drunk_. He drops his head on Sophie's shoulder, mumbling in her ear _osteoblasts are responsible for bone formation_, and it would've been embarrassing to _all heck_ if everyone hadn't been so bubbly with post-dinner satisfaction they could've floated right up to the shining gates of heaven itself before popping in a burst of lemon-meringue-pie laughter. He falls asleep on her shoulder and Penguin topples over Bepo, and Shachi follows suit, and they're all huddled in a circle in front of the fireplace, drunkenly kicking each other and whispering, eyes half-closed.

Sophie cracks open the window, listening to the faint hallelujahs in the frosty air. Law stirs in the cold draft, wakes up briefly to wrap his fingers around hers, and settles back on her shoulder.

She looks out the window and breathes, slow and quiet so as to not disturb the yellow-haired angel sleeping on the fire escape. His wings are stretched out, nearly blocking her view of the snowy skyscrapers and the perpetual exhaust hanging low over the city. The nights are long and filled with twinkling lights and she sings drowsily, _l'chaim, l'chaim, l'chaim_.


	5. roadtrip au: part i

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a proper road narrative consists of three things: driving through deserts, searching for bathrooms, and seeing chthonic beings on the highway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more old fic! this thing reeks distinctly of 2015. don't ask.

* * *

_where the sidewalk ends_

* * *

_**i.** _

They pile into Penguin and Shachi's banged-up 1996 Jeep Wrangler. Penguin slides into the front passenger seat, bringing up Google Maps on his phone.

She barely notices the strange smiley face graffitied on the side of their jeep anymore. It's just a part of their weird clan aesthetic, and she can't imagine them being without it, like she can't imagine Shachi without his cracked Save the Sharks phone case, or Hai Xing not taking pictures of everything he eats.

Logistics: they barely fit, but they do.

Anko slams the driver's door shut.

** _ii._ **

"Oh my gooooood…"

Traffic is at a crawl. The horizon steams with the crush of metal, sparkling tire rims, highway signs that announce your destination is anywhere but here.

"Oh myyyyy goood." Anko hits his head repeatedly on the wheel.

Law is sleeping in the back row with Bepo, his feet resting by Sophie's head. She seriously considers throwing a tantrum, then takes this opportunity to sew up the frayed edges of his jeans.

"I gotta pee." Shachi.

"We literally left thirty minutes ago." Penguin.

"I didn't have to pee then. Obviously."

Sophie hands him an empty plastic bottle. Shachi stares at this for a full ten seconds.

"_I cannot go in there_!"

"Why not?"

He flares red.

"Just run outside and go in the bushes and then jump back in," Anko suggests.

"_Don't do that_," Penguin says emphatically.

"Stop being a baby and pee in the bottle!"

Shachi despairs. "Okay, but, but, but you have to go in the back row!"

"I won't look, so–"

"_Go_!"

Rolling her eyes, Sophie clambers past Hai Xing–who is furiously training his Snorlax before battling an Elite Four–over her seat to the back row. She manages to squish on the very edge next to Law.

"You're in my sun," he tells her.

"That's nice."

"_And cover your ears_!"

The cars finally start speeding up again. Anko cranes his neck around and thumps the wheel. "_Where's the accident, fuckers_? _Where is it_?"

He swerves lanes and throws his middle finger up at the resulting horn blares. With a keen sense for death, Bepo plasters himself to Law, who spends the next three minutes prying the furry monstrosity off his face. The jeep proceeds to consider implosion.

"I CANNOT AIM IN THIS MANNER," Shachi hyperventilates.

Sophie peels herself from the window. "Anko," a worrying thought strikes her, "when did you get your license?"

"Okay, look. I've never been caught, so no one needs to worry."

"Um, Law," yell several horrified passengers. Law drags Bepo off him and harshly wheezes for breath, momentarily incapacitated. Sophie's camera flashes wildly. Penguin beams Anko with a torque wrench.

"I want my innocence back," Shachi announces in a quavering voice.

The car screeches to a halt. They discover Anko doesn't have a license, nor is a legal citizen of the country. He is distinctly smug about all this.

** _iii._ **

In the distance, there are vast mountains that look like the red hands of a god who hasn't quite broken the surface yet. They pass overturned chairs on the highway, empty plastic tables under white tarps. Miles and miles of nothingness under a hot blue sky. Penguin is at the helm and Shachi is navigating, only he is actually taking blurry unusable pictures of the scenery, but Penguin's okay with that because, well, he's Shachi. Kicked to the back of the car with Bepo, both enduring a time-out, Anko snapchats everyone.

And so the following conversations ensue:

**To**: Anko Hot Buns McGee  
**From**: Sophie  
_Why are you snapping me pictures of your toe, I am right here. Also, disgusting. Also, I am going to block you. You are blocked._

**To**: Ankomageddon  
**From**: Shachi  
_i showed ur pic to law and he says u might wanna get that checked out_

**To**: CAPTAIN BONE-CRUNCH  
**From**: ANKO  
_AM I GOING TO DIE_

**To**: Anko  
**From**: Law  
_Not from athlete's foot, no._

**To**: Anko  
**From**: Law  
_But I can imagine a few other scenarios._

**To**: Starfish-kun  
**From**: Sophie  
_So when in Pokemon do you take over the world and form an iron-fisted dictatorship to crush your those who defy you underneath your heel, taking all that they hold dear and leaving nothing but humiliation in their wake?_

**To**: Hitchhiker  
**From**: Hai Xing  
_that's called animal crossing, not pokemon (/ 'з')/  
it's good ヾ(￣◇￣)ノ  
want to play? ( ・◇・)？  
well, you can play after i'm done (•̀⌄•́)  
_

** _iv._ **

By midday, the jeep overheats. They take a break at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, and Penguin and Shachi investigate under the hood, coughing as a cloud of red dust explodes in their face.

Shaking dust from her shirt–really, it's everywhere–Sophie wanders inside the gas station. The cashier is engrossed on the grainy tv, some riots breaking out in a couple cities across the country, but it is far away from here. She finds Law slouching through the snack aisle. He is holding a suspicious amount of pixie sticks and flaming hot cheetos for a man of his brooding ability.

"We need proper sustenance," she announces.

He shows her a bag of veggie crisps and beef jerky. "Fiber and protein."

For all of their sakes, she _really_ hopes there's a restaurant nearby. They stand in line, her digging red dust from under her fingernails.

She pays for her cigarettes and a carton of mint chocolate chip and rocky road. There's a suggestion of calcium in there, at least. He kicks the door open and holds it for her. _What a gentleman_, she almost says, if it wouldn't sound so mocking.

** _v._ **

"Do you see the diner?"

Hai Xing nods. "Turn right."

"What, here?"

"No, ten minutes ago."

"_What_?"

"Yeah, you missed it ten minutes ago."

"I thought you were navigating!"

"I was." He holds up his DS. "I was navigating to Cerulean City."

"I SWEAR, YOU ARE ALL INEPT." Sophie throws her phone over her shoulder at Law. It hits Bepo instead, who is rudely distracted from licking himself and starts yelling. Or barking. Sophie thinks Bepo has more human mannerisms than a dog should have. Or a bear. Some bear-dog hybrid, she _really doesn't know._

"Don't turn left! You're going back on the highway." Law pokes around Google Maps. Shachi and Penguin immediately chime in.

"Head into that parking lot!"

"Do a U-turn here!"

"Use tackle," Hai Xing advises. Sophie slaps him in arm repeatedly until she almost mows down a group of picketers protesting something about the country going to hell. He has the gall to add, "It's not very effective."

"No one's letting me into the other lanes!" She's blocked in. The jeep shudders onto the highway, single-file formation.

"Assholes," snarls the Predominate Asshole, reaching around Sophie to slam the horn.

"Don't _do_ that–see, now they're flipping me off. Oh, great. Thanks for noth–HEY!" She gasps so deeply Law might've heard a lung pop. "_Do you talk to your mothers with that mouth, villain_?" Sophie rolls down the window, her face rapidly becoming blotchy. The other cars are treated to the sight of an enraged woman hollering fruit names at the top of her lungs.

Law retreats, "Never mind, ignore them and get off at the next exit–_watch out_!"

Sophie slams the gas and careens through three lanes. Their screams are so loud the ceiling light on the jeep cracks.

"OH MY GOD." Shachi, obviously congratulating Sophie's top-notch driving skills. No one is dead, which is the most important thing.

"FURIOSAAAA!" Anko hangs his whole torso out the window. Penguin subtly reaches for the torque wrench again.

** _vi._ **

The desert turns red to grey to yellow. Shachi equips his shades and follows the flow of a thousand other cars, driving into the flaming persimmon of a sunset. Hai Xing pulls out a machete and doles out pieces of watermelon.

They roll down all the windows: going ninety down a wide, endless highway, and it is the perfect–nay, the only–scenario to blast the most obnoxious music on hand. However, there is a problem: no one wants to listen to Law's iPod, because it only has Schubert on it.

"It's the _fully remastered album_," he stresses.

Even Bepo, who is usually so loyal because he is smart enough to _know_ where his snacks come from, shakes his head. Traitors.

Sophie raises her hand.

"We are not playing the Bill Nye theme song again," Law snaps.

"Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill!"

Anko chucks a magazine at her. Sophie rolls it up and uses it as a megaphone. "Inertia is a property of matter…"

"Hey, I'm the driver!" says Shachi. "Driver gets to pick the music, that is the universal law of the road."

They all wait for his royal decree.

"…Have you heard of the award-winning anime series Naruto Shippuden Opening Number One: Hero's Come Back?"

Penguin throws his shoe at Shachi. Shachi calmly responds to this by yelling "SECRET TECHNIQUE: DISAPPEAR JUTSU," and chucks the shoe out the window.

They spend the next three hours bickering over what to play, and end up compromising by listening to the radio. In this period Hai Xing beats Pokemon twice.

By evenfall, the road empties so that they only pass another car only once every ten miles or so. Law takes over the wheel. They grab coffee and a bite to eat at a Starbucks (there is always a Starbucks, even when there is nothing else around, and especially when you need one the most; it is probably enchanted that way).

** _vii._ **

The sky is all lavenders and lilacs, and the car is quiet. Beside her, Shachi and Penguin are sleeping on each other, their fingers curling gently together. It makes Sophie feel very pink inside and she scoots closer to the window to give them more space.

Anko plucks a few experimental strings on his ukulele, and then fires off into a fast, complicated opening, fingers flying across the strings and the fretboard. He leans over Law, strumming his ukulele. "Señorita, what's your number?"

He doesn't take look away from the road, but there is definite disapproval in his eyebrows.

Penguin is now very much awake. "Lemme see you move like you come from Colombia," he sings, grooving and nudging Shachi with his elbow.

"Why did I let you people talk me into a road trip?" Law wonders aloud.

"I never really knew that he could dance like thiiiiiiis!" Sophie warbles, pointing at Law. He does not dignify this with a response.

"He makes a man want to speak Spanish," Shachi croons.

"Como se llama," Hai Xing says in a dead monotone.

"_Si_!"

"Bonita!"

"_Si_!"

They wait, expectantly. Bepo nudges Law's arm.

"…Mi casa," he grits out, "su casa."

"_Shakira, Shakira_!" comes a rousing cheer, and they dive right into the chorus.

** _viii._ **

They stop at a Mcdonald's for coffee and chicken nuggets. Neon signs buzz, lonely-like. They huddle in the jeep, shivering, sharing fries and ketchup cups.

At one am, everything is eerie.

The desert is cold at night, even in the summer. They huddle under blankets and jackets, and Law turns off all the lights, turns up the heat.

Coyotes stop and prick their ears up as they pass by, their ghostly-bright eyes reflecting the headlights. She hears a howl, then another, silence; then, a small, lonely wail. Hai Xing is the only one among the rest who is still awake; he holds her hand for a while, then retreats under a blanket.

She curls up in her seat. The night grows weirder on a highway.

She imagines she sees a distant thunderstorm, lightning flashing in bursts of stark desert-silhouettes, counts the seconds in-between. The car headlights illuminates a row of cacti, waving at the roadside, and she imagines a whole landscape of them, a spiny, bulbous forest hiding just beyond the dark. She counts power lines like sheep.

They drive, and drive, and drive.

Then it appears.

An industrial factory hisses steam, trembles, turns its creaking neck to their little jeep. A million red lights watch them, unblinkingly. She thinks it is something from the future. It is a living, breathing monster, exhaling rolling towers of smoke. It shakes sleep off its back, the black towers and industrial cranes shivering. The belly is on fire, heartbeat thumping orange. It chokes out more smoke and howls, urgently, and the jeep shakes in the wind like a leaf. The ground trembles, the earth kicks up, no, no, it will not allow it to to move, to poison the world further.

"Law," she whispers.

"I see it." He grips the wheel and gasses the pedal.

It takes five minutes to drive past the whole factory, but they do. Its roars grow smaller and smaller, and then it's gone.

_ **ix.** _

The acid-green analog clock glows _4:25_. Radio static clears as the jeep finally gets decent reception, "The fire at the military fort is still under investigation–top brass now getting involved–"

He turns to another station.

"–update on a strange virus hitting the northeast–CDC has quarantined yet another neighborhood–"

He hits the power button. Sophie shifts, mumbles.

"Go to sleep."

She says nothing for a while, and Law thinks she's actually done something surprising for once and listened to him, until she murmurs, "It's not ever going to be far enough."

He has an answer for that. It's a good answer: "Then we'll just keep going."

She leans against the window, using a worn book as a pillow, heavy with scotch tape bound around the spine. _The Emperor of All Maladies_. And then she sets it down, because Law has been driving for hours and he doesn't even get to listen to Hai Xing battle Team Rocket or Shachi corrupt anime theme songs.

"Have you heard of the relic radiation of space?"

"No," he says, which she doesn't anticipate, but that's to be expected since she doesn't really know anything about him other than he's probably very smart and probably not a serial killer, "tell me about it."

"It's thermal radiation and the oldest light in the universe, dating all the way back to the Big Bang–"

"Do you study astronomy?"

"No, but I read it in an article, and it's _cool_. So, once upon a time," she motions with theatrical flair, "when the universe was young–"

"How young? Infant young? Grade school young? Barely out of utero young? Got to be specific about these things."

"Listen, I don't know how to convert the billions of universe years into our tiny human years. Just young, alright?"

"Sure, sure, go on."

"Once upon the time, the storyteller continues, before she was so rudely interrupted…"

** _x._ **

He shuts off the ignition and reaches back, pokes Bepo awake, who promptly licks Shachi, who yelps and kicks Anko in the eye, setting off a chain reaction. Sophie is already out of the car, running, the door swinging after her.

She jumps across the sidewalk, kicks off her shoes, and sloshes into the water. The ocean air is crisp, bracing. She walks as far as she can, the ocean rising to her thighs, her toes pressing into sifting sand. The wide, golden horizon leaves her with a feeling of wanting to swim as far as she can across the water. Endlessly, without direction: an infinite roadtrip. Her feet cling onto kelp and driftwood, a current away from flinging her off into the blue. _Going, going, gone_.

Shachi jumps on her shoulders and she nearly topples over, her toes digging into the sand, yelping as he splashes her with water. Bepo leaps after them, leaping through the tide. Law stands at the edge of the water, toeing it carefully, until Anko and Penguin run up and shove him on top of Bepo. She hears his swears over the rolling waves and blinks seawater from her eyes, and she can't get enough air, she's laughing so hard. Seagulls soar low, their calls echoing over the seashells and marram grass and half-washed-away sandcastles.

Hai Xing takes his phone out. They take pictures of the sunrise, of each other.

Sophie takes the most pictures. She takes them to remember, just in case.

They dry off on the sand, the ocean lapping at their toes. And then Law stands up. One by one, brushing sand off their clothes, they follow suit, until Sophie is the only one still on the beach. She hears the jeep start.

After a while, she picks herself up, stretches, finds her shoes, and walks up the sand dune to where the jeep is rumbling. It is a long way north, and they are out of snacks.


	6. roadtrip au: part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they'd paint her like they'd paint buffalo skulls. americana kitsch, coca-cola and white picket fences. 
> 
> (prequel to part 1, because writing things out of order is sexy.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can't believe i predicted the rise of a zombie plague in 2016. ugh someone take away my crystal ball.

* * *

_how  
many  
miles  
to  
babylon?_

* * *

** _i._ **

Shachi first passes her somewhere on a forest roadside. She is wearing all-green camo, so it is understandably easy to to miss. Besides, the horizon is smoking. A military fort nearby is on fire. Penguin adjusts the radio.

The next time they pass her, she is wearing a teenybopper Hello Kitty shirt and her hair is stark black and chopped to her ears. Her knees are bleeding. She holds her thumb up and swears fruitfully at the cars rushing by without so much a glance. A car slows down, catcalls, and speeds up again. She sprints after it, kicking the air and hollering, throws a rock at them.

The third time, she's sitting in the shade of a gas station, cigarettes littered around her like pigeons. Maybe she's homeless. Maybe she's waiting for someone. Maybe she's a prostitute. Shachi thumbs a distressed patch of pleather on the wheel. No one else in the gas station seems to notice her, passing by like she's a part of the wall. He doesn't want to say anything. It's not his business, right.

Penguin knocks on the hood. Alright. Good to go.

She watches them, a cigarette dangling limply from her teeth.

A shiver crawls up Shachi's spine. She looks like she could collapse at any moment and dissolve into the asphalt. Girls found in dumpsters. They'd paint her like they'd paint buffalo skulls. Americana kitsch, coca-cola and white picket fences.

He stops the car and rolls down the windows. "Hey! Need a ride?"

** _ii._ **

"Hi, I'm Sophie." She trips up to the jeep. Her smile is bright and very, very hard. "Got room for one more?"

Casquette adjusts his cap and glances at his friend–Penguin, she reads on his hat–who shrugs.

"How 'bout it?" the redhead calls to the backseat.

Rounding out the three amigos, the man in the back is reading a book. _The Emperor of All Maladies_. She likes the book. It's very smart. She thinks he might be smart, if he didn't look so scary and… greasy.

He glances at her, very briefly.

"'It remains," he quotes, turns the page, "an astonishing, disturbing fact that in this nation - a nation where nearly every new drug is subjected to rigorous scrutiny as a potential carcinogen, and even the bare hint of a substance's link to cancer ignites a firestorm of public hysteria and media anxiety - one of the most potent and common carcinogens known to humans can be freely bought and sold at every corner store for a few dollars.'"

Sophie stares at him. She thinks about stubbing her cigarette out on the windshield. Instead, she flicks the cigarette from her mouth and grinds her heel on it.

"Yeah," Casquette says, "he's always like that. So. Anyway. Welcome aboard."

He introduces himself and his two carmates, only she forgets their names as soon as she hears them. Her brain is still muggy with adrenaline. "We're actually on our way to pick up some friends," he tells her, "and then we're heading to the ocean, and then probably up north from there."

She shows them her pearly-whites and says something about soul-searching, traveling wherever the wind takes her. It's not totally a lie if you believe it hard enough.

** _iii._ **

It is a long way to the ocean. Penguin tells her she hasn't seen anything yet; they're still in a civilized area, wait till they get to the cornfields. They spend twenty minutes at a tourist shop in the middle of bumfuck nowhere because Casquette and Penguin insist they need to buy a keepsake. So she sits in her seat, next to the door like a proper hitchhiker ready to jump out if things go south, her foot tapping a vicious beat on the floor.

The scary man's legs are sticking out the window. Had been, the whole ride down the highway. He doesn't seem to be aware of how stupid that is. His furry companion is also fond of leaning out the window–like pet, like human?

He digs out a switchblade from his boot–which she is pretty sure is illegal in this state, but figures she shouldn't say anything when she has a Jericho semi-automatic nestled in her backpack. He starts picking at his teeth with the blade. She snorts under her breath.

"I heard that."

She leans over the back of her seat. "'The art of medicine is long, Hippocrates tells us, and life is short; opportunity fleeting; the experiment perilous; judgment flawed.'"

He looks over _The Emperor of All Maladies_.

She twists back around and mutters, "You're not the only one who's ever cracked open a book."

Casquette knocks on the window, pointing at the lock.

"We're supposed to be in another state by now," she tells them–scolds, really–when they stumble inside.

"But tourist shot glasses!" Casquette shows her. It has a picture of a squirrel wearing sunglasses.

"Cute," she says grudgingly.

Penguin slips in the driver's seat and fiddles with the radio. "Did you hear about the explosion at the military base?"

Static crackles. "–_tolls close around the interstate, airports shut down_–"

"We were just there, that's insane."

"Let's head out before traffic hits."

"–_some sort of pathogen affecting areas in the tri-county area–symptoms include incoherency, inability to feel pain, aggressiveness_–"

"Can I change the channel?" she asks, hands twisting.

"Go ahead," Casquette waves at their pimped-out dashboard. "What music do you like? We've been listening to the same alt-rock station for the past five hours."

"I like Linkin Park," the scary man objects, to which Casquette repeats, murderously, '_five hours'._

There are too many buttons, neon sticky notes with squiggly faces and labels. _Eject torpedo. Booster NOS. Engage spikes_._ Radio_.

Sophie swallows. Her heart races.

She presses the torpedo button.

The windshield wipers turn on.

** _iv._ **

"You want a shirt?"

The scary man is awake. She jerks up from daydreaming against the window, blinking away fiery screams and a man with half his skull missing howling against white padded walls–

"If you're going to shoplift, steal something in your size." He points at her Hello Kitty ensemble. "The security tag is still on."

She sweats. "I–I d-didn't steal this. I found it in a bin. On a street. A street bin. Bargain sale. Bargain street bin sale."

He crooks an eyebrow. "…So you want a shirt, or what."

Alarm bells ring in her head.

"Is–is this a–a plan to get me naked?" Sophie demands. He doesn't blink.

"Like I'd need a plan for that."

Rude _and_ a deviant. What a combo, dollar ninety-nine. All he has to do now is come with a soft drink on the side.

He scrounges around a duffel bag and tosses her the first shirt he finds. It's soft with years of wear, and smells of kerosene and ash. It's a very familiar scent.

"…Did someone start a fire in this?"

"Not recently."

Her knees nudge together. "Hey, look forward."

"Jesus," he scoffs, and she wallops the back of his seat with her foot.

"I _said_–"

"_Okay_." He looks forward, then scoots his seat back. There is a surprised yelp. "My bad."

She kicks him once more and dives to the opposite end of the row before he can cause anymore undue trauma. Her new shirt fits like a sack. She can pass for a boy–it's good, she likes it. He glances in the rearview mirror, then looks forward into the beacon of early onset diabetes that was a 7-11.

His phone buzzes with a new text. He checks it and sighs. "They're going to take a while."

"Why?"

"In my experience," he says seriously, "a debate between mint chocolate chip and rocky road takes at least thirty minutes to settle."

She clambers into the passenger seat. Sophie reminds herself for the umpteenth time to get Casquette or Penguin's number, so she can furtively text them and ask what this guy's name was again. He looks younger under the cloak of dusk, a little less barbed.

She thinks about asking his age, teeters on the edge of her seat, and says instead, "What would you do if I told you I'm from the military and a zombie apocalypse is nigh and we should be running for our lives?"

"You sound like Hai Xing," he says, after a pause.

"Who?"

"Never mind. I'm hungry."

His complete lack of reaction to her announcement is slightly distressing. But Sophie considers the fact that she'd probably die happier on a full stomach. "You wanna grab a burger?"

He sucks in air between his teeth. "I like fries."

"It's not like they're mutually exclusive, jeez."

"Shirt's on backwards, by the way."

"Oh. There's no tag, I couldn't tell."

"Yeah," he starts up the ignition, "I always cut them off."


	7. roleswap au: librae infinitum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> eleven years ago, rocinante escapes with law to marineford. but the scales demand balance; another takes his place.

* * *

_librae infinitum_

* * *

Rocinante picks new flowers for the table every Sunday.

(_Rocinante_, not Cora-san. Of all the things for Law to get used to, that's among the hardest.)

Marineford has a stable climate with mild winters and long, bright summers. Rocinante plants sweetpea and petunias, honeysuckles and daises, and grows rosemary and thyme to sprinkle over scrambled-egg-toast. He grows them on the balcony of the apartment Sengoku moved them in, just four blocks down from the Marine Academy that Law attended.

Top of his class, stellar recommendations, mentored in battle tactics by Tsuru and combat by Sengoku. He spends three years apprenticing with Smoker as his ship's doctor. When the World Government officially gives him the epithet 'Surgeon of Justice', Rocinante almost falls off the balcony in giddiness. Which was a feat in and of itself, considering the wheelchair.

Law's heard of the Supernova Ten in the papers, especially the Straw Hat kid. But that's outside his jurisdiction. He only hears stories about his former Captain's run-ins with the boy. Tashigi sends him letters venting about the calamitous Straw Hat crew and one particular Meito-hoarding, _refusing to fight me for whatever dumb fucking reason_ fuckhead among them. He likes the swordswoman and her omnipresent Meito nerdiness. Something about her fierce tenacity reminds him of Baby 5, and something about Baby 5 used to remind him of Lamie. Little sisters, huh.

Rocinante has Sunday poker nights. It consists of whoever's off-duty and wants to hang out with a cold beer on the balcony. Sometimes it's Captain Hina and Smoker, who leave the apartment smelling like lilac perfume and cigars; sometimes Garp and his two boys show up, the recruits he's taken under his wing. "I'm having the gang over later," Rocinante tells him. "When you come back, I'll make yellow snapper and pasta."

Law ties his hair into a ponytail. Once he graduated from the Marine Academy (with flying colors, Rocinante likes to brag to every human, animal, and flowerpot), he lets it grow out, like his mother once did. _Peace_, he inks on his knuckles, both hands. To remind him of what he's fighting for.

He's the captain of his own ship now. Captain Law. He's starting slow, mostly patrolling the waters around Marineford and building up the trust and loyalty of his crew. They're all good men and women, who follow his orders without question. Without so much as a laugh. It feels like ordering a bunch of toy soldiers around. Everyone tells him it just needs some getting used to.

"Be safe," Rocinante says, his voice striving for optimism.

"I'll be back next week." Law bends down and brushes his cheek against Rocinante's.

He can do that now, touch people. He can look at himself in the mirror, study the young man in his clean Marine whites, and not want to throw one of Rocinante's flowerpots at it.

* * *

There's a ghost in the midst of the Donquixote Pirates.

It lounges on the empty Heart seat between Spades and Diamond. Nobody talks about it. It lingers in the corner of mirrors, two faceless shadows at the dinner table. Sophie always feels a step out of place.

"He was our brother," Baby 5 says. "He would've been yours, too."

When she asks what happened, Baby 5 sucks in a small breath, her little forehead pulled in a grimace. She flounces away, her red bow swaying with the motion, and calls over her shoulder, "Doffy couldn't kill them."

It surprises her. She didn't know there were things in this world that her captain couldn't kill.

Sophie imagines a dark, scrawny boy sitting next to her at dinner. He'd be grim and morose, as Baby 5 described him, and he'd probably threaten to decapitate her with his fork. He'd be wearing a fuzzy hat and a dirty button-up shirt. He was kind of shit at fighting, according to Buffalo, so Sophie thinks she could've taken him on. Punch his face out, that's what she'd do. 'Cept he'd be four years older than her, and that's kinda an unfair advantage. And there was Doffy's traitor brother, too, but neither Baby 5 nor Buffalo speak of him. They get angry when Sophie asks, and Baby 5 once clubbed her in the head for asking too much, and so she stopped.

She brews poisons for Doflamingo: cyanide, hemlock tea, belladonna on the rocks. Monet teaches her how to pluck her eyebrows and also how to stab the biggest veins in the body for cleaner killings. Dellinger shows her how to wear a pair of stilettoes, back straight, chest forward, heels first, no, don't look _down_, silly girl. (She swallows down his lecture like medicinal tonic, and bets the third would-be Corazon never went through this torture.)

When she turns sixteen, the captain gets her a gift. It's a five-foot-tall nodachi, a trim of white fur on the handle. He calls it Kikoku, a cursed sword from North Blue. It's not a Meito, but it's not worthless enough to throw away either. Sophie doesn't know what the beans she's gonna do with it.

Sugar rests her cotton-candy head on Doflamingo's shoulder. Dellinger giggles behind his delicate fingers. They are all different, but they are steeped in power and furious elegance. Sophie and her awkward hands and incoherent stutters—don't belong. Sometimes it hurts being among them and the little games they play. Palace intrigue in the Donquixote Court. Sophie is much, _much_ better at losing than she is at the opposite.

Sometimes marines come to perform diplomacy at the seat of the king's throne. The Family puts on their best show when this happens, whispering malice. Marines are scum. The World Government is scum. The only good thing about them is that they're scum you can use. Otherwise, put a bullet in their heads and be done with it.

"But Doffy," she says one day, "you took me from a Marine ship. Wasn't I one of them?"

Doflamingo pats her head, running his fingers through her curls. "Don't think too much about it."

In her room, Sophie examines herself in the mirror. She unsheathes Kikoku and clenches it in her sweaty palms. She gives her reflection a hard, angry smile_._ Her lipstick smears on her teeth.

* * *

He rounds up a crew of motley pirates. They're an interesting bunch, with even a polar bear mink among them. Their co-captains constantly bicker in the brig of Law's ship, but once they hear his name, they mention that a pirate is asking around for the Surgeon of Death, and then they go back to arguing. Law's curiosity gets the better of him. If a pirate is asking to be arrested, who is he to refuse?

The island is small; there's only one town and one bar, and in that bar there's a young woman sitting at the counter. Her hair is long and golden and she's got a sword slung across her back, one that's much too big for her.

"Hi," she says to him. "Buy me a drink?"

Law ignores her, glancing around the bar. "I'm looking for someone."

"Hi," the girl says again. "That'd be me. I've always wanted to meet you, big bro. It's like I'm m-meeting a dream for the first time, except, ya know, you're _real_."

He gives her an odd look. "You've got the wrong—"

"Ah. Wait, s-sorry." She shakes her head, her face pink. "That was w-weird. Let me start again. Nerves, you know?"

Law catches a glimpse of her scarred wrist. A tattoo is nestled inside the crook of her skin—a crossed-out smiley face.

Her smile is slow like freezing water. It doesn't reach her eyes. "Doffy wants you to come home, _nii-chan_."

He grabs his gun.

Her Haki is good. She avoids his Room with a one-handed jump-flip and smashes her way through the bar. A shadow hovers just beneath her skin: a thirteen-year-old boy with amber tick-tick-ticking in his heart and a string of grenades running round his chest.

He doesn't know who she is, but he's pretty sure she's needs to die.

She slices through the bar. Her swordplay is slicker than kerosene; he can read Diamante in the flick of her, Pica in the shove of her boots. A string of vegetable insults fly from her mouth; she calls him a rotten pumpkin and an overgrown celery stick. Of course Doflamingo would pick her; she sounds like a veritable nutcase.

"You should keep a sword of your own." She evades another Room with Haki. "Your powers would be good for slicing people up."

"That's frowned upon in my line of work."

"You're not at all what our siblings described you as," she tells him, and kicks him in the face.

"When did Doflamingo pick you off the street?" Law asks, beneath her.

She presses her index finger to her lips, in some sort of waifish contemplation. "Around the time you and the second Corazon betrayed him and fled to Marineford. Oh, but he didn't find me in some dirty alleyway. He spirited me from a Marine ship in retribution." She bends over him, her nodachi slammed into the ground beside his head. "A little girl plucked fresh from the tree." There's no more smile on her mouth, only smeared lipstick. "I was your collateral damage."

For a moment he can't breathe, but then remembers it's because she's sitting on his chest.

Law flips her over and punches her in the stomach. The moment he gets the upper hand, she throws a grenade in the air, blows up the bar, and escapes.

He would've gotten caught in the explosion were it not for a pair of bear paws pulling him out of the way. The bar crashes to the ground and as the dust settles, he turns to look, baffled, at the pirates he thought he'd arrested.

"We weren't, uh, tryin' to escape or nothing," says the one with the penguin hat.

Sunglasses prods his companions and hisses, "I _told_ you we should've gone the other way."

"You're gonna arrest us again, aren't you?" the bear asks sadly.

Law rubs his shoulder with a considering look. Finally, he says, "Ever thought of joining the Marines? I need a good crew."

* * *

The Surgeon of Justice looks meaner than any marine she's ever seen.

Oh, pumpkins—he even had the World Government flag tattooed on the back of his hands, PEACE emblazoned on his knuckles like some kind of idiot. He isn't thirteen anymore. She's seen him in dreams more times than she could count, and even she couldn't have imagined the ponytail or the earrings. Which is annoying, because marines should _not_ be hotter than pirates. It is a stated fact.

A couple months after their meet-cute at the bar, Sophie wanders around the streets of Marineford, whistling. A pirate with no bounty and tattoos concealed by long sleeves is easy enough to go undiscovered. She loiters across the street from their flat, watching the two silhouettes in the window. There are marines and marine families everywhere; she smiles as they pass by, waving her fingers at the kids. Chubby little buggers. So cute, so kidnappable. She sort of gets Doflamingo. How could that big pink bird man resist a little cherub, especially one as adorable as she was?

She waits until the sky darkens. By chance, the door of their third-floor flat opens and tall shadow strides out. She watches him head to the corner store down the street, then slinks up to their place and casually breaks in.

The second Corazon flinches as she pins him down with Kikoku's blade to his throat. A bit excessive for a guy in a wheelchair, but you can never be too careful.

"Sorry about this," Sophie says to the kind man with gentle amber eyes. He's older than the photo she once glimpsed on Doffy's desk before he burned holes in it. "You seem nicer than the stories."

She glances around their little two-people apartment, with flowers and herbs growing on the balcony and cups drying in the too-small dishrack. The kitchen smells like curry. It feels more alive than Doflamingo's entire palace, which reeks of ghosts and lost memories.

"You hungry, kid?" he asks her, one inch away from getting his head lopped off. "It's a long way from Dressrosa."

Sophie tilts her head, smiles at him. What an odd man, this uncle of hers. He looks so much like Doflamingo; the same nose, the same jaw, the texture of his hair…

Corazon watches her warily as she examines the wispy ends of his bangs between her fingers. "Law said you wanted to drag us back to my brother."

"He mentioned me?" she asks happily, forgetting the hair.

"Once. Briefly."

"We'll all get to know each other much better on the sail back to Dressrosa," Sophie promises. "Doffy can't wait to see you again."

"Do you love Doflamingo this much?"

"I love him more than you ever did."

"But he stole you away."

Her smile drops. "Just as you stole the child who should've been the third Corazon. He would've made a grand pirate. Thieves, the whole Family."

The front door opens. "You forgot to bring in the mail again, Roci-san," the sound of shoes being taken off, scuffing against the doormat, "I brought back rice and orange juice, and Garp-ya accosted me on the street and forced leftover potato salad on me; it's your call if we should risk it…"

The groceries drop to the floor.

Sophie beams over the sword she's holding to Corazon's neck. Now, she isn't _really_ planning on killing either of them. There's no point in bringing two corpses back to Doffy; he'd just throw a tantrum about not doing it himself. Law makes the correct assumption and Sophie would've gotten two bullets in her brain if she hadn't ducked. The window shatters behind her.

It's hard to fight in such a small place; he lunges across the living room, firing his gun, and maneuvers himself so he's between her and Corazon.

"How did you find," he begins.

"It wasn't that hard. I used to be a marine, too."

The bullet he aims at her throat buries into the wall. She hops over the couch, throwing a fluffy quilt over Law's head as a momentary distraction.

"Why a-are you fighting for the World Government?" she wonders. "Didn't they k-kill your o-old country?"

"Doflamingo will never see you as a real part of his family," he snarls back. "You're just a double for me. A _shit _replacement."

"Maybe," she agrees, "but I am what I am because of you."

His face contorts. It's a nice expression, and she laughs. His eyes are filled with loathing. He might've been her shadow, her reflection, or her ghost. His hair comes out of his ponytail and she wonders how much he'll hate her after this. She hopes a lot. She hopes he dreams of her now, as she had done for eleven years.

On the balcony, she trips past a row of daisies and baby tomatoes until her back hits the ledge. His gun clicks; empty. She points Kikoku lazily at him, not moving in, and for a moment they're at an impasse.

"Tell me your name."

She does.

"Wait for me in Dressrosa, Sophie," he breathes with a vicious smile that looks far too much like hers, "I'll come find you, and then I will personally kill every last one of you sons of bitches."

"That," she replies, smiling back, "is a _rude_ thing to say to your sister."

"You're not my—"

She leaps backwards and falls into the night.

* * *

The siege of Dressrosa lasts one hundred and twenty-four days.

Sophie's got a bullet in her left shoulder and she's pretty sure a couple of her ribs are broken. Behind her, the city is smoking. The Donquixote reign has fallen to the Fujitora and the Surgeon of Justice's crew.

Trebol, Pica, and Diamante have died. Buffalo didn't make it but Baby 5 did, and Jora shielded Dellinger when the cannons started raining down from the sky. The toys have come back to life, and no one's seen Sugar or Monet, and there's a missing sailboat that Sophie bets holds two sisters who had cut their losses and fled together. At least, she hopes so. She's tired. She's fought and killed as much as she can. But there's still one last job she has to attend to.

She waits in the meadow, and waits, and waits. The cool spring rain comes down harder, and her hair slicks around her face in long, wet coils of yellow. She smiles when she sees him, and leans heavily on Kikoku's handle to stagger to her feet.

Law drags his right leg behind him as he limps closer. He slips more bullets into his flintlock and snaps the barrel shut. The rain feels good against Law's neck. He feels a strange sense of calm. At peace. Like he's right where he belongs.

They size each other up, looking in the mirror.

"That nodachi doesn't fit you," he tells her. The heartbeat in his ears doesn't sound like his.

She spits out blood pooling under her tongue. The breath in her throat could've been another's. "Same g-goes for you and your Marine coat, big bro."

"I'm not your brother. We're not family."

"Then what are we to each other?"

"Something worse," he says, raising his gun. _A terrible balance._

Sophie giggles like a fool, dizzy with exhilaration and blood loss. She raises her neck, back straight, feet poised. She holds Kikoku elegantly, in first position.

The rain strikes a steady beat, and, hand in hand, they go dancing into the netherworld.


	8. s/s/s: lock stock and three smoking barrels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“are we forgetting the ultimate ship? sexy, smoking, s-named runaways? sabo/sophie/sanji? it's a match made in heaven!”_  
\- yignifen @ tumblr

* * *

_lock stock & three smoking barrels_

* * *

Friday therapy for blonde S-named smokers who grew up in positions of privilege and ran away to Do Something Real With Their Lives. 

“What a niche support group,” Sabo says, looking at the banner as he reaches for the coffee (made with a special Sanji blend). “Are you two sure you didn’t make up your pasts after you learned about me?”

Sophie informs, “Actually, we both think you’re lame and also your scar sucks.”

“Take a fucking sip and sit down,” Sanji says, passing his cigarette pack to Sophie.

Sabo can set his mouthy company on fire and burn them to a crisp. but he was raised politely, so he sits in the empty chair, takes off his hat, and lights their cigarettes. They glance suspiciously around, measuring each other up (Sophie throws a half-eaten donut hole at Sanji when he fixes his gaze south of her eyes and starts squinting like he’s running numbers in his mind), then start comparing stories.

Sabo argues that he’s the least richboy among them because he’s been a feral child running around in the woods since he was, like, eight. Sanji says he left his family at that age and was already working as a cook by the time he was ten. Sophie’s eyes twitch as she realizes she’s the only one who didn’t leave her family until recently. This is not looking great for her. She is undoubtedly the richest richboy here.

“If you think about, we’re bananas who peeled _ourselves_,” Sophie points out quickly. “And that’s all that matters. We are three naked bananas walking on our own path of self-actualization away from the battlefield littered with the rotting corpses of other bananas. Maybe life is just the process of peeling through our inner banana.”

The boys stare as she finishes her metaphor.

“You know?” sophie adds.

Sabo heats up his coffee in his hands to avoid coming up with an immediate reply. Sanji takes a heavy drag of his cigarette, then says, “Sophie-san, do you believe in love at first banana?”

“This was a bad decision,” Sabo says to no one in particular.


	9. kiku/sophie: regarding hair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Spare some Sophie and okiku interactions pls just a crumb”_  
\- anonymous @ tumblr

* * *

_regarding hair_

* * *

The woman was _glamorously_ tall. Her hair swept back in a ponytail tied with a red ribbon, a pale demon mask sitting over her face, her graceful figure cutting a swath through the battlefield. 

But in dappled afternoon shadows of their hideout, Sophie discovered Kiku had just as many scars as she did elegance. She sat, her back straight, on the grassy knoll. Sophie crossed her legs, sitting on a rock higher than Kiku so she could reach her hair. Her burned fingers ran across those dark indigo strands, brushing a comb through it.

“A samurai hardly has time for such creature comforts, O-Sofi,” Kiku had said firmly, when they were both covered in blood and sweat after laying waste to another band of Orochi’s men. Rolling her eyes at proper hygiene being labeled as some kind of ‘amenity’, Sophie dragged the other woman back to the Ninja-Pirate-Mink-Samurai alliance’s den and threw a wooden bucket of clean water on them both.

When Sophie announced she was done, Kiku felt her long hair. She couldn’t quite hide the pleased look on her face.

“It… does feel nice,” she murmured. “I must repay the favor.” Despite Sophie’s refusals, saying she had no idea how annoying it was to brush her thick hair, Kiku merely replied, “I insist,” and took the comb before she could say another word. After barely ten seconds of attempting to wrestle Sophie’s hair into behaving, Kiku said, “…I see.”

Sophie made a noise of triumph, but this didn’t deter the samurai. Kiku gathered the hair around the right side of Sophie’s head into a small, messy bun. Then she snapped off a branch sprig from a nearby sakura tree and tucked it between her yellow curls to hold the bun in place, the pink flowers bright against her ear.

“Oh,” Kiku began softly, and stopped, blinking. “Ah, that is to say, you look… very pretty.”

She protested, “I can’t even see myself.”

“Then trust me when I say it,” Kiku said with a smile, and Sophie blushed.


	10. highschool au: rocinante intermission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“do you think, in your modern au, law is lowkey rich??? like. not immediately. but like because his parents were so rich and died that like. he gets $$$$$$$ once he turns 18??? but until then lives with corazon eating dollar tree cup of noodles and lives in an apartment that shakes when the train comes by?? cuz i started wondering that after reading FruitPunched and now im like. damn. that would explain some things..”_  
\- anonymous @ tumblr

* * *

a comprehensive corpus of the **hazards **of smoking while class representative  
(rocinante intermission)

* * *

“Oi, I have money now. Let me split the rent with you.”

Rocinante immediately reacts with the greatest offense. “How dare you, Law. You absolute toddler of a boy—” (thirty-one to Law’s eighteen, basically an older brother, but no one mentions that), “—how dare you insult me like this, put that money back in your piggy bank and keep it for an emergency, you hear me? Like when you’re in college, and you meet someone, and it’s on you to be a gentleman and pay for a love hotel—”

“_R__oci_.”

“I know, I know, of course I trust you because I know you’d introduce them to me before you try anything—”

“Love hotels are a waste of money,” his high school delinquent says flatly, as though it were obvious. “There are bathrooms in every seedy club.”

“The point is,” he says loudly over Law, before he can die of heart failure, “I take care of you, not the other way around. The gall. The sheer _nerve_. I would demand satisfaction on the fields of combat if I wasn’t about to faint, Law.”

And then he goes off to squat on their grody little balcony that can only fit one small collapsible clothes-drying rack, chain-smoking and indignantly petting the stray cats that slink around the back alley they live over. Subway tracks are built just beyond the alley, and the train comes right on time, brightly lit windows crammed with passengers blurring by. The cardboard-thin walls of their apartment trembles.

After a while, when the hot water boiler chimes to a stop, Law compresses himself onto the balcony with two chicken cup ramen. Rocinante takes his, because Law made it and he hasn’t the pride to refuse. Also, he is hungry. They squeeze together on the precariously built assortment of wooden planks nailed together, slurping down noodles and counting the trains that rumble past their cramped neighborhood of utility poles and dumpsters that stink to high hell.

Law empties the last few clingy noodles for a stray alleycat to lick up. He touches Rocinante’s arm, a hand clenched persistently on the sleeve. “At least let me buy dinner every once in a while. I’m sick of cheap ramen. Let’s get the good stuff.”

And Roci can agree to that.


	11. modern au: quarantine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> little roomboom quarantine fic. fluff, angst... unabashed smut-writing practice. posted in two parts on tumblr, bundled together here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i initially wrote this as some catharsis. i wrote it from a place of optimism. i thought things would get better - it really seemed like they would, at one point. but the world is entering another wave, and i feel weird posting something that implies this is "over", or "it will be easy to return to normal". that is absolutely not the case.
> 
> keep wearing your masks. save your friends, family, the elderly, everyone with an underlying condition (like me!)

* * *

_i. the sun will come up tomorrow_

* * *

His hands are shaking a little as he opens the door. His twelve-hour shift ended a little after midnight, and up until then, he’s fine. He’s always fine – he has to be, he’s knee-deep in his residency program and he’s seen it all before (but not like this, comes a voice in the back of his mind, not like _this) –_ until he gets back home, pulling keys and wallet out of his pockets, taking off his jacket.

There’s very little clutter around; she had nipped that problem in the bud with an entire collection of cleaning wipes. Science projects packed up, the menagerie of microscopes and beakers in the closet. Easier to clean this way. He’s always fine until he opens the apartment door and sees how quiet and tidy and still everything is, and the light from beneath the closed bedroom door.

He takes another step inside, and his phone rings with a video call.

It’s hard to quarantine when you’re living in a two-bedroom apartment, but they’ve tried. Separate baskets for laundry. One person uses the living area/kitchen while the other waits. Showering at different times (this is manageable, contrary to Sophie’s thoughts). Sleeping in different areas (this is less manageable). Absolute minimal contact. The room that was once their joint study is now the place that he crashes on a spare futon.

“Hi,” she says, her face lighting up his screen. His hand automatically drifts closer, as if bringing the phone towards him will bring her nearer too. “You look tired. How was your day?”

He settles back on the futon, then rolls on his side so it’s almost like they’re facing each other, with the way she’s curled up. His shoulders are still tense, have been the whole day. On the mattress, his hand is a fist. “I’ve been better.”

It hits him now, after a long day of tense professionalism, of assuring his patients they’ll be fine as he – no, they aren’t always fine. It hits him now. He is so fucking tired. The best solution to this problem is typically curling into her neck, feeling the warmth of her arms around him, the weary springs creaking in their mattress, even the teasing lilt in her voice when she says_ does someone have a crush on me?_ He’d pinch her sides for that, and she’d laugh at his grumpy frown, and with a deep, heavy sigh he’d be utterly forced to kiss the spot below her ear.

Bad idea. He’s been in contact with so many patients. His love isn’t selfish.

“I miss you,” she says from the other room. He can hear her actual voice through the wall, the weak crack of it.

The reply gets caught in his throat. He thinks back to before this whole thing started, to the long afternoons together on their apartment balcony, strolling through the city parks and remarking on the portliness of well-fed squirrels, late nights on their bed debating what sci-fi movie to watch and poke plot holes in as they go to sleep. He should’ve treasured those moments more. He shouldn’t have taken them for granted, so sure that they’d last forever. Finally, Law manages, “I miss you, too.”

A tiny smile flits across her mouth. “You really should’ve taken the bedroom. I should’ve made you take it.”

He’s too tired to shake his head. “I’m fine here.” 

It had been a point of contention between them. The neighbors must’ve thought they were breaking up, when it was actually about a mattress and her screaming statistics about sciatica at him. He wouldn’t hear of it. She gets the bedroom. She’s the one staying home all day, anyway. He was going to sleep elsewhere. End of story.

Of course, he hadn’t known what it would feel like, looking at her through a small metal box as they both sleep alone for yet another night. 

Sometimes (most times) it feels terrible. Knowing that she’s just beyond a door and a wall and a couple of nimble steps and a stifled conscience. If he was just a little more selfish, he’d lift up the blanket, crawl in beside her, and relax his bones against hers. His fist grips tighter (away from the screen, wouldn’t want her to see) at the thought of it.

He’s never been a man who required company to survive. He attempts to remember what it felt like to be happily single, without anyone to bother him or badger him into pointless conversation, without all these worries constantly occupying his mind. Then he looks at her again, at her sleepy eyes, the hand tucked beneath her chin, and he wants to reach through his phone and fold his arms around her and _exhale_. God, he wants to breathe.

He can get through this. He’s a professional. This is what he _does_.

“Hey,” she says softly. “Law. It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

He doesn’t know what sort of expression he’s making. He’s sure he doesn’t want to know. He’s so fucking tired. He’s made his peace as a medical professional; if he gets, he gets it. But if he comes back and passes it to her, if she gets sick, if she crumples in the middle of their kitchen, if she gets hooked up to machines on a hospital bed, her breaths shaky and struggling–

Stop. Don’t think about that. Can’t think about that.

“I know it doesn’t seem that way,” she continues. “Nothing about this feels like it’ll ever be alright again. Things will be different after. But different can still be okay. Maybe this world is doomed in the near-to-distant future," she says this because they’ve been talking about it in their nightly videochats, the constant struggle of feeling hopeless, “but up until then, we can still be happy. You can still save people. We can help others. Isn’t that kind of the whole point of existing?”

The turbulent, never-ending anxiety within him calms. Just a bit. But it’s still a relief. The reminder is good. Even he needs to be reminded of this every once in a while.

“It’s so hard knowing what you’re going through and not being able to help you,” she says in a quiet rush, and then blinks quickly. “Sorry.” She brushes her face against the pillow, wiping away stray tears. (The way she’s curling up faces his normal side of the bed. It is despairing to think about.) “I don’t want to make this about me when you’re doing your best.”

His heart lurches. Well, first of all. he cuts her off, saying that that’s absolutely not what she’s doing. Second of all, don’t apologize. And third… “I don’t particularly enjoy the situation the world’s found itself in,” he murmurs, and it’s hardly an emotional admission, but it still feels _pathetically_ painful even after all these years, “but at least… you’re here with me. And I’m here with you.”

She sniffs, and doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Then, “Hey, you wanna do something fun before we sleep?”

“Need I remind you of the last time you tried a striptease through videochat,” he says with clinical stoicism. “You broke a lamp and almost set your panties on fire.”

“We _agreed_ that was a _trial run_,” she hisses in mortification, and huffs as he chuckles for the first time that day. A smile works its way across her face. “And that’s not what I meant.”

She snuggles deeper into the pillow, eyes bright as she begins a rambling one-sided conversation that she knows he likes, because it’s the only thing that’s been helping him sleep every day for the past week. She begins it with, “We’re going to go to so many places when this is over,” and then proceeds to paint a picture of where, and how, and with who as his eyes drift shut. It’s long past midnight, but he falls asleep to the sun.

…and when it’s over, they do.

* * *

_ii. i want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees_

* * *

Her shirt is lying in a rumpled mess on the floor. Any other day, it would’ve been a scandal.

—she made a schedule, for the record. She’s _good_ at making schedules. Planning. Lists. It’s about the anticipation, after all. It’s about the _suspense_ of waiting, and being disciplined, being heroically freakin’ selfless. Despite their previous forays into the world of unethical science (they were younger back then, that’s the excuse), they know to keep their physical distance while he’s still neck-deep in hospital shifts. So when the day comes where things start looking a little better, a little safer, she allows herself to imagine it: the careful flick-flick-flick of his fingers on her shirt buttons, being close enough to drag him over by his belt and unbuckle it while watching his expression turn lazy. She’s fine with waiting longer. It’s about torturous restraint, the building _thrill_—

His belt doesn’t make it off his hips. They don’t make it to the bed, either.

—after one last, grueling shift, Law is assigned a week-long break. She plans out the activities of their first day back together: get up, pack up futon, brush teeth, have sleepy breakfast. Waking up on their bed somewhat refreshed, they clean up the study, adjusting to being physically close again, and it’s strange. She’s delighted, but feels _shy_, uncomfortably aware of her morning breath and how tired he must be still. But that’s okay. She’s penciled in ‘lechery ♥’ for next week, which gives them plenty of time to settle into their old routine before anything… strenuous happens. But in the middle of brushing her teeth, her organized schedule goes off the rails. He comes up behind her as she scrutinizes the hygiene of one molar, toothpaste dripping down her chin, and then he starts kissing the back of her neck, tracing along the skin of her stomach—

Law’s always been the one good at self-control. always been the one to say _L__et’s sleep, you’ll be tired tomorrow,_ or _R__emember the last time you said ‘fuck me until I can’t walk’? You pulled a muscle and couldn’t even stand. No. Do some stretches._

(That is not a verbatim quote. What she actually said was _obliterate me like a vaccine to polio_, which is so much more self-respecting.)

Well. Right now, that self-control is nowhere to be seen.

It’s feverish. Clothes barely half-pulled off. Against the sink, hot and flushed. Pressed to the bathroom door, sweating and gasping and stunned at the sheer amount of physical contact after so long. She’s still clenching her electric toothbrush in her hand. She snaps at him through minty-fresh kisses, badgers him about her spoiled agenda, biting his mouth, pulling him closer with her legs wrapped around his waist.

“Too much?” he rasps against her ear, ragged and wet, a shred of willpower returning through the heavy-lidded haze. This is just about the worst thing he can say while sinking her down onto every arduous inch of him. “I can stop.”

Her fingers scratch against his scalp as she drags his head back, clenching black hair between her knuckles. “Don’t even think about it,” she snarls in frustration, their rough breathing tangling together like legs under a bedsheet. His eyes go hooded, and she’s forgotten how much she _liked_ that. It’s been too long. Torturous restraint can exit, stage left.

She apologizes to her schedule in the most urgent, frantic way possible: fumbling, elbows banging, greedy, desperate touches, his scruffy beard tickling her chin, saying hello without words over and over and over.

—to be fair, they planned that schedule together. The day was supposed to be relaxed and quiet. Sex isn’t on the list; Law knows he should be taking it easy, getting extra hours of sleep in, catching up with everything he’s missed. But then he finds himself staring at the angles of her face that he’s gotten used to seeing on his phone screen. And after they’ve packed up his futon, she leans against him in a small hug and says, “It’s nice sleeping together again,” and he a) agrees, and b) imagines a different kind of sleeping together. Last night, he was so tired from his shift he could only trace the curve of her bare shoulder with his eyes. Today, leaning against the bathroom door, watching her brush her teeth, he means to just lightly brush her hair away from her face. But then his hand wants to remember what it’s like to touch her neck, and then his mouth wants to remember, too—

They take a brief pause to shower because they’re filthy and gross. Well, she goes in, kicking off her panties, and he follows. he can’t stop running his hands all over her—feels like he’s never been so starved for anything in his life. She leaves angry, childish love bites on his neck, and informs him that after careful consideration (consideration, he thinks, involving his fingers between her legs), she is slightly annoyed at how long he’s made her wait.

“The decision to wait was unanimous,” he reminds.

“_S__till_.” She scrapes her nails down his back, hard enough for it to ache tomorrow. He closes his eyes as he shudders. 

Once they’re clean, they stumble out of the shower, get distracted with throwing their clothes into the laundry basket, and then proceed to ruin their newfound cleanliness on the hallway floor. She straddles him, the towel bunched up behind his head (”Don’t want to hurt that p-pretty skull of yours,” she whispers), her hands around his wrists, pinning them to the ground. They’re both going to be so bruised tomorrow. it’s not even ten in the morning.

“Rice, carrots, dumplings, fish,” she recalls, coming down and catching her breath on top of him. Sweaty and sticky, they list what they need to buy at the supermarket later, settling back into comfortable routine, normalcy. The lascivious romp around the apartment is presumably over. In the kitchen, they discuss the notion of waffles. She starts getting out the ingredients, naked golden curves leaning against the counter, with the intention of setting out things before getting dressed. It’ll be their first proper meal together after so long, and she’s excited, and Law’s little grin means so is he.

And then her fingers are tracing his tattoos again, which is perfectly innocent, and he’s thumbing her nipple, which is _decidedly_ less so. Waffles with whipped cream, while important, are adjusted to priority number two. They’re still drenched in each other, but that doesn’t matter, he’s ready for it again and she’s already pushing him onto the sofa—or maybe he steps back first—and sitting on him—or maybe he pulls her on top—

Either way, his hands are traveling up and down her spine and her arms are folded around his shoulders as she buries her face into the hollow of his neck. Their motions are no longer messy, frenzied with want. It all ceases into a slow rhythm. They take their time touching, holding each other. Tracing shapes onto skin. sighing. He holds her face, brushing her hair aside, watching her eyes squeeze shut, a high gasp as her fingers dig into his shoulders.

It’s been a _while_.

Finally, finally, finally they make it on the bed, showered again and clothed, after a satisfying breakfast-for-dinner/breakfast as dinner (because they’d been a little too caught up in each other to remember food, until she kicks his shoulder lightly while his head’s between her legs and whines that she’s _hungry_). It’s late afternoon. every productive activity in her schedule has been shot, and every muscle in her body will be sore tomorrow. But that’s tomorrow Sophie’s problem.

“I missed you,” she blurts out in the middle of working on her PhD thesis, and supposes that’s an unnecessary addendum to a day spent manhandling each other all over the apartment. Her cheeks turn pink. She focuses back on her online research. There’s tea and an ashtray on her nightstand and a mess of books and pens on his. It’s like they’d never been apart.

Law sets down his book down and leans on his side, propping himself up on his elbow, his other hand smoothing over her thigh. “I missed you.”

“I missed you more,” she returns coyly, because she wants to hear him say—

He leans in. “That’s embarrassing.”

She smacks her pillow over his head. He accepts this fate. Then he maneuvers close again, giving her a shifty smirk, and she traces the side of his scruffy jaw. They slowly, gently kiss each other hello one more time.


	12. whitebeard au: i have a thing about fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“So like.... Soph... growing up as a whitebeard pirate... being there when Ace arrived... imagine... the shenanigans... the chaos... THE BOOM”_  
\- bastetwrites @ tumblr

* * *

_i have a thing about fire_

* * *

Marco was her favorite, and everyone knew it.

The only word she seemed capable of speaking when they first brought her on the ship was _pineapple_, growled squeakily by a scowly, dirty cub of about six or seven. Vista teased him mercilessly for it. A pirate in his prime, just shy of thirty, the right-hand man of Whitebeard no less, lugging around a little brat that refused to let go of his leg with her butt planted firmly on his foot? Attached to him like the world’s most stubborn piece of tape?

Oh, the horror. The undignity. If the Marines ever got wind of this, it would be the end of the Phoenix’s reputation forevermore.

But there was a second reason, aside from that fascinating mop of hair that curled up like a most excellent tropical fruit, that kept her entranced: sometimes he would _glow_.

And Marco knew it too.

The first slice was dull. Dull cuts were the worst. Didn’t have the force to saw through cartilage, so he had to help her by pressing down to give the metal a little more _oomph_. 

Blue fire erupted from the wound. 

“…and that’s how you cut through an ear. Well done, bookbug.”

Her whole face lit up between splashes of blood. Small fingers prodded the newly-made shape, sun-browned, curving over the fresh cartilage and bone. Harmless cold flames licked up where the point of her fingertip met skin, teasing. She beamed.

Tiny fingers prodded Marco’s cheeks, pulling and stretching the man’s lean face. He was indulging her. Spoiling her with amputated body parts. He could tell she liked learning. She’d taken to writing and reading like a moth to a flame, and he was already contemplating what books to give her next. Perhaps something a bit more difficult, like mathematics, or scientific theories…

Marco stiffened, a terrible thought striking him. This was a bad sign, wasn’t it? He was getting lulled into complacency. Pretty soon he’d start getting used to this bug crawling around him and he’d be teaching her the right way to cut open a jugular and the cleanest way to snap a femur, and that wouldn’t do, it wouldn’t do at all—

She clumsily patted his hair and raised the hand saw again, motioning that she wanted to try jamming it into his eye next.

“Let’s eat lunch first. Thatch’ll get his knickers in a twist if we’re late and the food’s gone cold.” Marco picked her up easily, feet swinging, and carried her out the operating room. She stuck two fingers up his nostrils. “Ow, you little shit.”

Gurgling in mischief, she threw her arms around his neck. In her little fists, she gripped his severed ear tight like it was her favorite new teddy bear. “Can we try acid next time, Marcle?”

“I’ll do you one better, bookbug. I’ll let you try dynamite.”

Perhaps it was there when it all started. When she developed a… _thing_ for Devil Fruit users. More specifically, a thing for fire.

It wasn’t _entirely_ Marco’s fault that Sophie turned out the way she did.

(But it was for the most part.)

* * *

First Division, doctor’s apprentice. Official title.

Unofficially: maker of poisons, student of chemistry, ardent lover of explosives.

She wore a sensible pink romper, the nurse’s uniform adjusted for her age, and steel-toed boots on the advice of her big sisters, who hid pistols in their bras any time they arrived in a foreign port. Whitebeard’s cross-and-crescent was tattooed on the inside of her left wrist, small and unassuming beneath a palm full of wrinkled, scaly burns.

Years passed. The ocean flowed onwards.

* * *

“Jinbe got him good, didn’t he?”

“Poor boy. Waste of a pretty face.”

“You think so? He looks a little…”

“Unconscious?”

“_Feral_.”

Coal-black eyes blinked open. The Captain of the Spade Pirates jerked upright, snarling at the nurses. They shrieked as the bed burst into flames, his whole body blown red as he _raged_. Not even the chains could stop him.

“Get b-back!” A solid weight landed on his chest, thumped him good, pinned him down with Haki. A tranquilizer needle flashed and a hollering scream: “Marc-_aaaaaale_!”

The air scorched and shimmered in a heat haze. The veins on his neck tensed as he tried to rip or melt the chains off him, whichever came first. Sophie struggled to gasp for breath, sweat raining down her face.

“I’ll kill ‘im,” the growl ripped out of his chest, livid and fierce, “I’ll kill Whitebeard, kill that bastard _dead_!”

She yanked his jaw open and stuffed a live grenade down his throat.

All was light.

When the smoke cleared, Sophie realized belatedly that she wasn’t holding onto dead, goopy chunks of feral idiot. She was curled around a body that was decidedly breathing, covered in fading embers. The corner of the sick bay was blackened with ash. Struggling to move herself out from under him as he half-crushed her, disoriented, she blinked fire from her eyes.

He belched fire, puffs of hot, sulfurous smoke pushed out by heated lungs. Rolling upwards, he gripped her by the chin, breathing fumes in her face like a dragon. His voice was roughly accented, marking him as a desperado from a nowhere island in the backwaters of East Blue: “You’re a shit nurse.”

She stabbed him with the tranquilizer.

* * *

The new crewmate was ruining everything.

Not only did Sophie have very valid reasons to hate him (he’d been trying to kill Pops the moment he stepped on the Moby Dick, he’d destroyed three windows already, and he was getting blood all over the deck like a scoundrel!), but she also irrationally despised how easily the rest of the crew had taken to Ace.

Once the whole fervor settled down and he demonstrated he could behave not-homicidally, he was actually kind of charming. He was polite, and he did his chores, and every morning he was up at sunrise with the other men pulling up a massive net of the day’s first catch. He lit cigarettes before anyone had to ask him to, finger-gunning and blowing smoke out of the tip of his pointer finger, laughing cheekily. It was enraging.

And the worst part was: Ace was _pretty_.

He was _way_ prettier than her.

He had to die.

“Pops,” she’d said, “Pops, he’s insane, he’s a madman, he’s a shirtless devil roaming the Moby, I’ve lost count how many times he’s tried to kill you, and he’ll try more if you don’t sort him out quick—”

“I’ve made up my mind. Ace is my kid now, same as you. Less talking, more ale. I said more ale, brat, not more needles!”

“Marcle,” she’d urged, “Marcle, you have to get rid of him. He’s a liability. Two of us. Dead of night. We’ll throw him overboard.”

“He’s a good kid, once all that homicide left his system. I recall a little bookbug used to be the same way, yoi.”

“Thatch,” she’d badgered, “Thatch, let me add a _liiiittle_ bit of poison to his dinner? Puh-_leaaase_?”

“For the last time, get out of my kitchen or it’s extra veggies tonight.”

“Izooooo—“

“No.”

“But I_zoooooo—”_

“It’s Izo’s quiet wine time, little one.”

“Teach,” she’d grumbled, “Teach, you’re the only one who understands me.”

“Aye, why not give the lad a chance? Boy made of flames. I’ve never seen power like that on a kid so young. Useful thing to learn from.”

“_Rrrrgh_!”

* * *

“Curls, wait up—”

Ace had never been on a battleship as massive as the Moby Dick before. A thousand pirates moved inside her. Sophie walked ahead of him, sure-footed, stepping around her crewmates as if it was a prepared dance, a routine he was still getting the hang of.

She was doing her best to ignore him again, which was very funny when you took into account that her favorite pastime lately was spying on him. Sophie was incredibly obvious about it, lurking around corners with her shadow conspicuously on the floor, and she’d smack into the wall in her haste to run away as he approached, whistling casually.

It was something like divine justice to follow her around in the daylight, while she took to snooping through his things at night while thinking she was being so discreet about it. Snooping for another battleaxe, or poisoned darts, or something else to kill Pops with, even though he told her, time and time again, that he was done with the attempted murder. Whitebeard was his Pops now, same as her. Not his first father, but the right one, the best one. Yet Sophie seemed to pretend the mark on his back, rippling between muscle, didn’t exist whenever he caught her squinting at him over yet another book.

“Marco your dad or somethin’?”

Her nose wrinkled in disgust. “_Ew_. No. Pops is my dad. Marcle’s my… Marcle.”

“Can I call him that?” Ace asked brightly.

The look she shot him was withering.

It made him grin wider. “I’m guessing ‘bookbug’ is off-limits, too.”

Her cheeks flamed and her mouth pursed, cheeks puffing up in silent indignation at his invasive questions. Twiddling his thumbs as he sat on the edge of the sick bay’s bed, Ace supposed he could cut back on the teasing. It was a nasty habit of his, using his one thousand-watt smile as a weapon. She wasn’t even carrying any grenades to stuff inside his mouth again.

She opened the medicine kit and got to work disinfecting the superficial wounds he received after coming back from a short campaign with Jozu and Marco. Most of the blood Sophie wiped away was someone else’s. He didn’t have to point that out; her eyes were narrowed, as if thinking irritably that she didn’t even have to be here. As the youngest and least qualified of the nurses, she was relegated to taking care of minor injuries.

But she wasn’t being lazy about it. Her brow was furrowed in concentration as she inspected his face, tilting his head this way and that. Any jokes he might’ve cracked to ease the tension faded in his throat. He found himself watching her.

Something came over Ace, and he said, “All my life, I’ve had loads of brothers. But I’ve never had sisters before. Let me know if I get something wrong.”

Sophie slowly met his gaze, her brow still creased. She poked her finger into his eye.

“Ow!”

“You didn’t turn into fire.” She sounded disappointed.

“Warn me next time,” Ace snapped, rubbing his eye churlishly. He hadn’t meant to get distracted.

He flinched slightly at her touch, and then went still. His eyes fluttered closed, and he felt her smooth her thumb over the crease of his eyelid. When he opened his eyes again, the look on Sophie’s face was distant, thoughtful.

“We’re two of the youngest pirates on the Moby,” she said carefully. “Most of the guys here are like uncles. I’m not told ‘no’ very often, so I… may have been a little spoiled growing up. If you keep me in check, I’ll do the same for you.”

And then she touched their foreheads together so quickly Ace wasn’t sure if he’d really felt it. It was a clumsy, awkward version of the greeting the children of Whitebeard did amongst each other, but it was also a gesture of acceptance. 

“I can work with that,” Ace murmured, resisting the urge to touch the heat on his forehead.

Sophie studied him with a look like—well, it felt like a shameless desire to break open his ribs and see what he was made of. It was a challenge. It surely had to be a challenge. Ace had never, would never, run from anything, so he stared back, not quite knowing what he was getting into, only that he sure as hell wasn’t gonna back down from it.

“I made a brew that I distilled from petrol,” she blurted out, pushing her pointer fingers together. “According to my hypothesis, your firepower should grow exponentially with more fuel. We could… have an experiment.”

That sounded intriguing. “Make sure you keep your Haki up. Could burn you on accident.”

“Promise?” She said it without meaning to, clearly, by the way her mouth snapped shut and how she glared in mute horror at herself.

Ace tilted his head, lips twitching. He glanced down at her mangled hands.

“I’m h-horrible,” she admitted with a stammer, flipping her knife between her fingers like a stim. “I’m a little creep. You shouldn’t have agreed to that. You should be terrified out of your wits.”

What a perfectly strange girl. He expertly feigned boredom. “A mad scientist in a pink dress. I’m shakin’ in my boots.”

“I have a thing about Devil Fruit users,” Sophie warned, never breaking eye contact as she smoothed the cold flat of her knife against his throat. Ace didn’t summon his flames. He kept himself solid, allowed the sharp edge to rest dangerously on his neck in a way he’d almost forgotten. She swallowed, her tongue darting out to lick her lips. “Specifically, I—I suppose I have a thing about fire.”

_Oh_, he thought. _Good_.

* * *

“I think,” he said a while later, looking around at the burned debris cluttering the deck of the Moby Dick, “we should’ve found an uninhabited island for this.”

“Ace.” Marco emerged in blue wrath. “_Bookbug_.”

“My brothers and I,” Ace whispered urgently to his partner in crime, “used to trade off who’d get blamed for our collective dumbassery, so all three of us wouldn’t die on the same day.”

“You’re a Whitebeard pirate now, fool,” Sophie hissed back, clutching his wrist so he wouldn’t bolt. “We go down together.”

“Fuck me.” He laced their hands together. “Let’s do it.”


	13. ace lives au: part i

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Read ch.33 to 37 in one sitting and. Tear ducts. Working overtime. I kid you not my entire sleeve is soaked. If it suits your fancy, and if you've time for it, can you please, please, pretty please with half my soul on top (need the other half to read it) describe how you see it if Ace was able to escape and introduce Sophie to his brothers? Whitebeard or ASL or both.”_  
\- anonymous @ tumblr

* * *

_he came back from smoke_

* * *

Sophie didn’t know why or how she thought of it: she just blurted it out on instinct, no time to think with hellhounds and prison wardens hot on their tails, “Iva-chan, is there any way you can get in contact with the Revolutionary Army? I bumped into their top forces just eastward of Sabaody, on Omiramba! They might still might be in the region to help!”

Emporio Ivankov blinked down at the young woman running alongside him. The legendary Queen of Momoiro Island was quick as a whip, and he didn’t need her to explain what she meant. His eyes widened, and despite the sweat dripping down his massive face, his heavy makeup remained supernaturally waterproof. Ivankov replied quite diplomatically, as he Hell Winked away jailers, that revolutionaries liked to avoid scuffles between pirates and marines.

“No, no, you don’t understa—Sabo! You know Sabo!?”

Ivankov’s eyes snapped back to her. “The boy from—”

“Dawn Island! He lost his memories, right? Your Chief of Staff, he doesn’t remember it, but he’s Fire Fist’s and Straw Hat’s brother! There must be revolutionaries planted in Sabaody who’re watching Ace’s execution! You have to find some way to contact them and tell them to get their butts to Marineford!”

“Hee-haw! What a twist! His father Dragon, his brother Sabo, that Straw Hat boy really has all the allies in the world, doesn’t he!”

Sophie looked out at the jailbreak vanguard where rubber punches were flying, slamming down obstacles left and right effortlessly. When Emporio Ivankov put it like that, it didn’t seem like a twist at all. Just another example of whatever fateful wind that blessed Straw Hat Luffy the moment he was born. “Yeah, it’s _greaaat_…”

She hoped she sounded respectful, properly in awe, son of Dragon, Will of D, blah blah blah. But with the way Ivankov looked at her, it was likely that her version of respect landed around the vicinity of a toilet.

Sophie narrowed her eyes. _Let’s just see if this works._

* * *

For a moment, Ace was about to go up in smoke.

A burst of blue that was Marco slammed into Akainu. Burned an arm and a leg clean off, but that was okay, he was already regrowing it as he half-limped on the ground, yelling at them to _run_. Ace took some magma to the chest, but he still somehow had his head still on, smoke billowing from the burns on his skin.

A black top hat, racing in as Akainu lifted his fist back again.

Sabo jumped through the fire, blazing.

He grabbed his two brothers and _hauled ass_. The two of them were latched in his grip, a hollering Luffy and Ace, unbecoming kindling.

Sophie was knocked flat on her butt, but Koala was there to drag her upright, her fists clenched tight and her kicks tearing through mortar shells the marines blasted their way. Revolutionary officers appeared from the dust with their pistols drawn and their commands thunderous. Ivankov and Jinbe defended Sabo’s back as he dragged Ace and Luffy to safety. Oris Plaza split in half as Whitebeard drew a line in the sand, shattering apart the Admirals trying to give chase.

The Polar Tang emerged, Law roaring at the pirates to come aboard. The Red Force appeared, providing backup. Teach watched from the top of Marineford Castle, tapping his fingers with a grin dark as night.

There was a brief but intense burst of violence with Kizaru flinging out beams of light, and Shanks stepped in to stop this tomfoolery. Sophie leaped onto the Polar Tang, and Jinbe followed her with Straw Hat in his arms, who was bleeding massively from his wounds. Marco flew Sabo and a burning Ace to the revolutionaries’ battleship; Ace was clenching his hands over his burned chest, but his eyes were bright, and his hair was whipping up all over as he looked back at his father.

Whitebeard’s laughter echoed across the sky as his children sailed free.

* * *

Amazon Lily saw an entire armada docked on its shores: the Whitebeard Pirates, the Red Force, Sabo’s battleship, and a yellow submarine.

“I’m fine, I’m fine, really,” Sophie said, upon returning home. “Oh, don’t make a fuss. Well, make a bit of a fuss. I almost died.” The Hearts hugged her until she couldn’t breathe. “Yes, this is nice,” she sighed, sinking into her crewmates. “Thank you.”

The first thing she did—after bandaging herself up, as Law was quite busy doing some life-saving surgery on Straw Hat—was take a _very long shower_. She was pretty sure it’d take another week to wash away all the Impel Down gunk. She was still finding gross little gloopy stains on her skin after furiously rubbing soap everywhere.

After getting dressed, she swiped a stray newspaper and was reading it in the bathroom while brushing her teeth. Someone was knocking loudly at the door of the submarine’s deck, and someone else, Penguin maybe, was shouting her name. He could wait a minute. She hadn’t brushed her teeth in almost ten days. She needed to devote a full hour for killing the plaque on her precious molars.

As she flipped through it, Sophie breathed a sigh of relief. The papers hardly mentioned her. She was just another convict that escaped Impel Down. Her little adventure in Marineford went unmentioned, hidden from the public likely to keep whatever shreds of confidence in the World Government that was left. She expected a bounty increase at some point, but the papers were solely interested in discussing the three brothers that were taking the world by storm. Ace, Sabo, Luffy. Stars aligned by fate, connected through red sake cups.

_Ha!_

That wasn’t bad at all. In fact, it was perfectly lovely. Sophie nodded to herself as she straightened out the newspaper with a satisfied little raise of her chin. She was happy to remain anonymous. She wanted to enjoy her freedom to wander islands without anyone knowing who she was, blending in as a completely inconsequential face in the background as she explored, thank you very much.

The knocking sound became more insistent. She heard her name being called again. This time it was Hai Xing shouting it. Ah, her mortal weakness. She couldn’t ignore him.

She stuck her head out into the passageway. “Ah’m bwushin’ m’teef, can’t it wait—”

Ace was at the door, and she almost dropped her toothbrush. Her gut dropped right through the floor. _Oh, god._

“I’m sorry,” she burst out, rushing forward, and she was stroking his cheek before he could say anything. His eyes were ringed with red and his head drooped, as if his neck hurt to much to carry its weight. He looked a bit half-dead. His skin wasn’t as warm as it should be. “I’m so sorry, your pops… oh, Ace, I’m sorry.”

His chest was wrapped in bandages that were getting a little spotty with blood. But he stayed on his feet, his unruly black hair falling all around his face, bruises and cuts scouring his torso and disappearing under loose pants. His hand came up to rest over hers, and he lifted his eyes, and they looked at each other.

She cupped his face in her hands, pressing their foreheads together. Ace still wasn’t saying anything, he simply swayed forward, perhaps inadvertently leaning into her touch as his brow furrowed in—in grief? In pain? All of the above, surely. She couldn’t even imagine what he was going through, and she didn’t know at all what to say, so she just babbled like an idiot, “But Whitebeard saved all of us. And—and—and he saved you. He did what dads are, are supposed to do, so, so it’s okay, you know, it’s okay to cry, he loved you so much, it’ll be okay—” 

“I need to show you something,” Ace said, and she shut her mouth. Wonderful. An excuse to stop sounding like an idiot. She’d take him up on that offer.

He took her by the wrist and led her outside to the deck of the Polar Tang. They stepped out into the warm sun shining over Amazon Lily. This time, the toothbrush actually did fall from her hand, toothpaste dripping from her mouth onto her shirt.

Because fourteen knees touched the ground. Except for Ace, who stood beside her, all the remaining Whitebeard Commanders went on one knee, bowing their heads. Jozu, Vista, Izo, Haruta, Blenheim, good god her head was spinning—_who are they bowing to and what the actual heck is happening?_

Sophie responded to this fittingly by going, “Wait, oh my god, what,” also dropping to one knee, and looking around wildly for—she didn’t know what—for the ghost of Whitebeard with his wrinkled old man pecs? A glory of angels, no, the Pirate King himself descending from the clouds?

“No, Curls, this—” Snorting with laughter, Ace pulled her upright and touched his hand to his chest. “This is for you.”

“Oh,” Sophie said.

She stared at him for a moment longer. If this was a joke, it surely had to be in poor taste. Though, what did she know. She was the primordial entity of poor taste.

Sophie turned slowly on her heel and stared at the Whitebeard Commanders, all of them on bended knee. On the Red Force, anchored beside the Polar Tang, Shanks lounged a hand on Gryphon’s handle and nodded at her with a grin. On the revolutionaries’ side, Sabo took off his top hat and clasped it to his chest. And the crews of the allied captains on the battleships circling the Polar Tang—the Decalvan Brothers, Whitey Bay, Whirlpool Spider, Bohemian Knight Doma, and dozens more infamous New World pirates, looking at them all made her head hurt—every single body lowering itself on bended knee, every head bowed, from captain to chore boy, on the aftdeck to the bow of the ship, extending their respects… to _her_. 

To the girl with toothpaste dripping down all over her chin.

“Um,” she said, after a great stupid pause. “Why?”

Marco rose to both feet, and the rest of the Commanders followed suit. He seemed to be chuckling too, by the way he was running his hand over his mouth. “Emporio Ivankov told us everything, yoi. The Whitebeard Pirates are owed to you.”

Sophie still looked like she was shocked by an electrified wire, mouth open like a fish, unblinking. Actually, she wasn’t quite sure if she was existing on the right plane of reality anymore. She slapped herself on both her cheeks, startling the Whitebeard pirates. And then as she began hitting herself on the head and muttering to herself, Marco glanced at Ace, who crossed his arms and shrugged as if he didn’t see anything wrong.

A whistle pierced the air. On the upper deck, Anko waved down at Marco. “Can we have one of your islands?”

“Very ballsy,” Marco said. “Doesn’t quite work like that, but we do have lots of gold.”

Sophie’s eyes flashed, turning predatory. “Shachi, Penguin,” she called behind her, “how much gold is it gonna take to fix up the Polar Tang?” Kizaru’s lasers had done a number on her.

Shachi flung his arm around Sophie’s shoulders, giving Marco a two-fingered salute. “I’m thinkin’ somewhere in the territory of a quarter-billion beli?”

“Two hundred and fifty mil?” the Phoenix said easily. “Done.”

Shachi’s mouth dropped open. “Baller,” he whispered. The news spread to the Hearts, who were watching this jaw-dropping scene. While their jaws had not actually dropped when the Whitebeard Pirates offered their gratitude to their resident janitor (in fact, they had mostly stifled their giggles or legitimately cried in laughter), a cheer rose up at the idea of rolling around in money.

“Aww, your crew’s adorable,” Ace approved.

Sophie nodded. “Way cuter than yours.” 

He replied, “How am I supposed to argue with that?” with a look that made her shove him aside. The surgical anesthesia clearly hadn’t left his system. It was making him a bit touched in the head.

She changed the subject. “You and Sabo talk yet?”

“Yeah.” A pause. “No. Not really. Come with me.”

“Seriously?”

The disbelieving tone of her voice made Ace frown. It was more of a… pout, actually, if big, fiery pirate boys were capable of looking like a kicked puppy.

“Okay, _okay_. Stop doing that. Your luck’s gonna run out one day, Portgas.”

“Maybe,” Ace hummed, the sunlight of a new day gleaming in his eyes, “but it sure as hell hasn’t happened yet.”

* * *

“This is weird, right?” Ace inquired, after a long, long stretch of silence.

“This is weird,” Sabo agreed, standing about a small kitchen table’s distance from him.

Yeah. This was also weirding out Sophie. She’d agreed to be in the same room as them, and for lack of a decently private neutral zone, they were standing in her tiny cramped cabin that hardly had room for _her_ on a good day, much less two other people. Ace was leaning against the door with his hand still on the handle, just in case he remembered a good excuse to bolt, and Sabo was pressed up uncomfortably against her desk. She sat in her hammock and was doing something actually beneficial to her time, which was giving her curls an oil treatment. It made the cabin smell like coconut. There was some dried seagull poop on her window. Yes, what a perfect backdrop for a reunion between two long-lost brothers.

The silence was getting weird again. Well. Weirder.

Sophie decided she had to do something. Sabo was a recovering amnesic. Ace was—well, he was just recently almost executed, and his dad died, and he was the secret baby of Gold Roger. She didn’t know where to begin with these two. Their lives massively _reeked_.

She took pity on them. (And also she really wanted to go lay down with her crew, because whenever she closed her eyes she saw spiked bats and cannonfire. The recurring nightmares were gonna be so lame.) She cleared her throat, tossing her damp hair over her shoulder and arching a hairy eyebrow. Her oversized shirt and cotton shorts somehow achieved intimidation. “You noticed it, right?” she asked Ace. “Look at his _hair_. Isn’t it just like yours?”

Ace studied Sabo for a second. “You grew it out.”

Sabo raked a hand through his wavy blond hair, which imitated Ace’s in length. “Yeah, and? I’m still taller.”

“I still have two working eyes.”

“Shut up. You got burned worse than me.”

“Cool, right?” Ace lightly patted his chest. “Our scars are gonna match.”

Sabo turned vaguely pink. “Whatever, man,” he muttered, smoothing his hair over the left side of his face. “Is that my jolly roger tatted on your arm?”

Ace flexed his bicep and Sabo let out a burst of exhilarated laughter. Then he scrubbed his face. “Fire Fist. You were Fire Fist the whole time. You even had my roger on your arm. You know how pissed off I am?”

“Heard you go around destabilizing countries and shit. Sounds busy.”

“Yeah. It is. But I feel like I should’ve had some time to call you up, if only I fucking remembered.”

“I never remember to call back.” Ace waved it off. “Seriously. Ten years is nothing.”

“It’s _ten years_, Ace.”

“What’s ten years when we got a lifetime ahead of us?”

Well, that was all wonderful and good. “Don’t lose your memories again,” Sophie called, still combing oil through her hair. “I don’t have the emotional capacity to go through it a second time. This has been, like, terrible for my blood pressure.”

They both looked at her. She’d only known them for a few months, at _best_.

“Thanks,” Sabo said, his voice soft with sincerity. “For Ivankov. For everything.”

Her chest flip-flopped. _Ewgh_, what was _that_? “No problem,” came a breezy reply. “You’re now indebted to me for life, but I’m sure you can work with that.”

“You know what, I take it back,” he dryly amended.

“Good.” She gave him a stern look. “I prefer it when you’re not impeded by your crippling sappiness.”

“Wow,” Ace said after a beat, and confided in Sabo, “She’s never talked that way to me.”

His lips twitched. “These marine girls, they like it when I’m mean.”

Sophie scoffed. Loudly.

“Did she really spit in your face?” Ace muttered, remembering with a flash of wicked interest. Something about watching their interaction seemed to flip a switch in his brain. “How’d you get her to do that?”

“He was a miscreant!” she trilled, sticking her hands on her hips. “And you know what, the real hero of Dawn Island was Dadan-san all along, whoever she is. Ace said she was a bandit, but I think she might’ve also been a very large bear.”

“What happened in Impel Down?” Sabo shot back at Ace; they were standing shoulder-to-shoulder now, a unified team to deal with the annoying girl in front of them. “You told her about Mt. Colubo. I know my rights. There’s something in the Brotherhood Codex about this.”

He was in for a long story.

* * *

“There’s a country on the brink of a civil war about a week’s sail from here.”

“You should come with us for Pops’ funeral.”

Caught off-guard, Sophie stammered, looking between the two of them. Ace’s and Sabo’s expressions were serious; they weren’t joking. That was all very nice, but, but—

She was rescued by a bloodied hand on her arm, wonderfully familiar. Her captain was cleaning off his hands, having just emerged from his operation room, and was fixing the other two men with a politely—or rudely, it was honestly hard to tell with Law—flat stare. “She’s finally home, fellas. We’re not eager to hand her away anytime soon.”

“Understandable. You know, you got a great crew here.” Sabo rested a hand her on the shoulder, and he grinned down at her, that wrinkled eye of his an upturned crescent. “You fit in pretty nicely with them, Heart.”

“It suits you,” Ace agreed with a warm glow in his face, and he reached out and touched her right wrist, where red ink spilled around a tattooed heart. Here in the sunlit passage of the Polar Tang, they seemed almost an eternity away from their prison cell in Impel Down.

Sophie slowly allowed herself to smile back, feeling a glimmer of something that almost frightened her: hope for better days ahead.

She hadn’t… _really_ done anything, except for saying the right words at the right time. That was hardly worthy of adulation. But maybe that was enough. The world may not know what she’d done, but those who mattered did. And they would remember it. She’d never been particularly good at making the right decisions in life, so this… this felt like something to be proud of.

Though, it was of Sophie’s opinion that she’d be _perfectly fine_ if she never again got wrapped up in another escapade with these Dawn Island boys. Unless there was something in it for her, of course. Perhaps another debate with Sabo. Or another one of Ace’s stories. Well, they could discuss the details later.

They went down to Law’s operation room, and Ace opened the door a crack. His eyes lit up and his smile grew, and he opened the door wider, stepping inside.

“Hey, Luffy. There’s someone we want you to meet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ace/sophie/sabo in a nutshell


	14. ace lives au: part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“How would it be alternatively if law caught Soph and Sabo and it became a love triangle?? Even with ace... a love square?? How do you think that’d go?”_  
\- anonymous @ tumblr

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes i will write 8k words of law pining with a bisexual twist thanks. [cutewaves](https://cutewaves.tumblr.com) made a mix for this chapter!! listen [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5osRPF8fGrQxZHb8Xs4Ev8?si=lkvF62vTSt-tpODTavzN3A)!
> 
> warnings: language, law in denial, dirty thoughts.

* * *

_sword x gun x fire x staff_

* * *

Sophie was taking more calls than usual.

That in and of itself wasn’t alarming. She had friends outside of the crew, despite her insistence that they were just unlucky sods putting up with her eccentricities.

The Polar Tang’s collection of Den Den Mushis were all kept in the humid little greenhouse below the bathroom’s stubbornly leaky pipes. They called it a greenhouse mostly as a joke; it was a small alcove where Manta kept his plants and they grew fresh herbs. But there was enough greenery for the snails to nibble on, and when they were happy and satisfied, their communication signals grew stronger. That was always important when you were sailing one hundred meters below the sea.

It was there that Law glimpsed her yet again, chatting with her back turned towards him, surrounded by leafy plants. Her free hand—the one that wasn’t holding the phone’s round receiver—was playing with the springy chord. Twisted her fingers into it, right by her hip where she’d tied the sleeves of her boiler suit. Her right foot tapped, a sign of her thinking. Some kind of discussion was happening, and she was absorbed in it, judging by the fervor in her voice.

The snail was looking up at Sophie with some kind of vaguely amused expression while waiting for its chance to speak. Which it did, when she was finished. And Law heard the voice.

A papercut of irritation itched in his sternum. Nothing big. (_Intelligent, well-spoken, handsomely burned, she likes burns, intelligent, military commander, intelligent—_) Ignorable. Law walked it off, Sophie’s reply echoing across the tinny metal walls after him.

Later, he broached the topic at dinner with a performatively bored, “You can’t catch a break from Sabo-ya.”

Blinking, the noodles falling from chopsticks mid-bite, Sophie closed her mouth, made a noise like _mmmm_, and nodded. As if she had to take a moment to remember what her captain was talking about. As if she didn’t even notice how much time she was spending with her constant phone companion.

“We’ve been discussing government.” She shrugged. “I don’t know half as much as him, but for some reason he likes asking my thoughts on it. Honestly, I think he just likes picking arguments.” Sophie sniffed a little. “My regime _would_ be glorious, but he’s too much of a rabblerouser to see it.”

Sabo of the Revolution had plenty of experienced army generals to consult. Made perfect sense he’d call the resident chemist aboard a pirate ship for… _advice_.

Law stopped himself there. He wasn’t going to inadvertently disparage his own crewmate. Who cares if she was talking to Sabo? Her mind was leagues above most; it was natural anyone would come to her for a good discussion. And he wasn’t going to act… what was this, was he fucking jealous? Internally, he recoiled at the very thought. Please. That would be pathetic.

“Makes sense,” he replied seriously. “Your IQ is vastly superior to his.”

Her first reaction was a pig-like snort, and then a flustered, trilling laugh that startled the others into glancing over. Sophie went back to shoveling food into her mouth, equally pleased and embarrassed. Beneath the table, her foot gave him an appreciative little kick.

The papercut-itch in his sternum vanished, melted away back into whatever miserable hollow it crawled out from.

Their relationship was vague and ill-defined—thanks to him and his stone heart that had no room for anything but a single-minded goal—but it wasn’t fragile. Sophie could fuck a hundred other people, but at the end of the day, her attention was always going to come back to him.

Her leg stretched out so her foot shyly touched the tip of his, and Law allowed himself to forget about her mushi calls with scarred men in top hats. (He knew she preferred his furry one, anyway.)

* * *

Well, they were bound to run into each other at some point.

A revolution.

An island overrun with scavenging bandits.

A pirate captain hunting bounties for hearts.

* * *

Winter hung low over the island of Fensalir, which was caught in a grueling trifecta between its king, its people, and the raiders hungry for easy pickings. Long blue shadows stretched over the snow, cast by a tall forest of thick pines and simple log houses with smoke curling out of their chimneys. It was a village in the outskirts, reasonably hidden by a mountain pass and far away enough from the capital to engage in conspiracy.

The stinging wind was familiar, as was the shade of frost clouding the portholes of the Polar Tang as it rose from the sea, and the chill between his teeth. The Hearts were stamping through the forest, layered in fur coats. Bepo rejoiced, flopping belly-first into the snow. It was familiar, but not quite North. A shade off from the purest white-blue of the coldest winter. But it wasn’t bad.

“How are you not freezing your balls off?” Anko yowled at the North Blue boys; he was shivering so hard he was practically vibrating. Uni and Clione looked similarly woeful, and Ikkaku had attached herself to Bepo and wasn’t letting go.

“You get used to it,” Law said, ruffling his helmsman’s hair.

“Ice in your fucking veins, Cap,” Anko groused. Penguin and Shachi pounced on him, informing him seriously this was how actual penguins huddled for warmth as he glared.

At their sighting, revolutionary officers emerged from the houses, many of them bandaged and all of them carrying guns beneath their cloaks. The blond man with a pipe slung on his back lifted his gloved hand in greeting. 

Sophie, in a bundle of ermine furs and yellow curls, bounded forward. She hesitated as she neared Sabo, first reaching for a handshake, then a high-five, then settled on patting him quickly on the arm. This incredibly awkward hello didn’t deter Sabo. He scooped her up in a proper hug, arms wrapped tight around her waist, lifting her half a foot off the snow as Sophie yelped and kicked her legs, their steaming breaths mingling together.

Law eyed him. After Marineford, he couldn’t hold this reaction against Sabo. Even if he wanted to.

After Sabo plopped her back down with a bright grin, Koala threw her arms around Sophie’s shoulders. Law eyed her, too.

“Look at you, Hexhead,” Sabo laughed, and made a show of brushing off his coat as if he hadn’t brazenly embraced her first. “Were you that eager to see us again?”

“Only so I can fix your hair,” she shot back, standing on her tiptoes. “Biggest rebel faction in the world and you can’t even invest a few beli into buying a comb?”

Perhaps it was the falling snow. Perhaps it was just the cold. There was the faintest tinge of pink on Sabo’s ears. The color was creeping up his neck, which Law saw as he bent his head slightly to allow her to brush the shaggy hair by his neck.

Law cleared his throat.

“Trafalgar.” Sabo straightened up and grinned, shameless. Law was struck with an understanding: they both knew what was going on. “As agreed, the bandits are yours. If you keep them off our backs, we’ll keep the marines off yours.”

Law allowed nothing to show on his face. As if a hint of emotion would make him lose a contest he hadn’t even signed up for. “Let’s make it quick,” he said curtly, brushing past the officers.

“Been ages since we’ve seen snow!” Shachi swung his arm around Sabo. “Nice going, bro, picking this spot to wage war.”

Sabo straightened his hat. “You know we don’t _pick_ which islands fight for independence, right?”

Behind him, Law heard Sophie gasp, “Really? You’re not a fairy? You don’t bring revolutions whenever someone chants your name three times in front of a burning throne?” Was it just him, or was it overtly teasing? Not that there was anything wrong with that. She could tease whomever she liked. And Shachi, too. And anyone in his crew. It wasn’t even about her.

They went inside a wooden longhouse commandeered by the Army. The sudden tightness in his lungs was surely caused by the roaring fire pit. The officers scrounged up some warm food and drink, surrounded by gunpowder barrels and swords being sharpened on whetstones. Law went to work immediately, going over the bounties on Fensalir’s bandits and where they were last spotted.

It grew hot enough that the Hearts pulled off their furs. Sophie peeled off her gloves, sweating lightly since she was sitting so close to the fire. As if he’d been waiting for that, Sabo sat across from her at the table, and outstretched his hand—which was now also ungloved—to greet her properly. She shook it.

Detached, Law watched.

And then Sabo clasped her in both hands and leaned forward, engaging her in a grim discussion about the state of the revolution. But he was still holding her hand in his. And his thumb was tracing the deep, wrinkled scars that contorted her knuckles.

The movement was so light that Sophie didn’t seem to notice it. She nodded, listening to the Revolutionary Army’s struggle with businesslike focus, and did a very good job of pretending her gaze wasn’t straying to the crawling mass of burned muscle on Sabo’s face. Maybe she did notice what his hands were doing. Maybe she was fine with it. Maybe she even _liked_…

Then he realized what he was doing and promptly engrossed himself in planning how to round up hearts as quickly as possible. But his vision was being pulled back by a traitorous magnetic force: glancing at Sophie again, watching her trace the outline of Sabo’s striking scar with her eyes. It wasn’t fair. Law could’ve also had scars that looked like that. Only he ended up with his Devil Fruit at thirteen, which ensured he was capable of stitching up any wound or otherwise evading them in the first place.

_Fair_, he thought, a burst of frustration coming out of nowhere. _What the hell do I care about that?_

Law scratched his chest. The papercut-itch was growing.

* * *

They played games with each other, sometimes. He’d say something annoying, very much on purpose, but quietly enough for no one else to overhear. Would be in bad taste for the crew to think he was genuinely insulting Sophie. But it was all a part of the game. 

And the game was: he’d get a rise out of her with something-or-other, and she’d retort, very sharply, cutting him down to size. He’d respond with a gallingly factual observation, and Sophie’s face would flush, and her eyes would get steely, and she used her anger as an excuse to prod his arm. Or poke his belly. Or get very, very close to him as she explained at length the proper method for a titration.

The game went unspoken, of course. A pretext for them to get closer whenever they (he) wanted to. The way Sophie would sometimes stop, suddenly hug her arms, and step back with an embarrassed look made it easy to imagine that she was struggling to control herself. It was immensely enjoyable sport, if Law didn’t linger on how scummy it was, objectively, to torment her like her feelings for him were nonexistent. It was, after all, just a game.

But on their second day in the winter country, he saw something that made him rethink that. 

Law watched between the crack in the ajar door, and the papercut in his sternum tore open so wide it left him breathless.

They were talking about the best way to flip the king’s loyalists to the Revolutionary Army’s side. Supposedly. Sabo was showing her papers of compiled information on his desk, and he did so by leaning his hip right beside her stretched-out legs, his hat off and his hair all tousled and pale in the crisp light. 

And Sophie—she was sitting in the birch chair with the tall back, her feet casually resting on the edge of the desk. She was speaking up at Sabo, only Law couldn’t hear what she was saying, as he was too focused on watching her scarred hands trailing along the arms of the chair that could only belong to the Chief of Staff. She was still talking, and it was no doubt intelligent and insightful and the fact that he couldn’t hear any of it was further proof that he was the scum of the earth. Her fingers were absently rubbing up and down the smooth wood. Up and down. Up and down.

Law couldn’t see where Sabo was looking at, but he sure as hell saw the slowly stiffening line of his back. And then his hand came up to rest, friendlike, on the tip of Sophie’s boot where it perched on his desk. His fingers curled over the leather, not even minding the dirt on the bottom of the sole.

She seemed to take it as a challenge, because her eyes narrowed, her mouth twisted in a smirk, and she tried to jab Sabo’s thigh with one of his quills. He didn’t jump back. On the contrary, he swooped down and said something in a voice that dipped unacceptably low. His fingers slid up the laces of her boot like a slithering serpent, as if he was going to untie her shoe right _there_, right there in front of Law. And then they were talking roughly, snarking back and forth, her eyes glittering in delight as she tried to keep ahead of her opponent’s wit.

It never occurred to him that she could play games with someone else.

As Sabo leaned an inch closer, there came a swift knock on the door. It was time for a heart-hunt. Outside, the stags were prepared and the crew was waiting. But as Law calmly and unemotionally considered his new revelation, he wondered if he perhaps didn’t need one hundred hearts. He could deliver the Revolutionary Army’s Chief of Staff slimy organs directly to the doorstep of Mary Geoise, and that would be worth a hundred hearts twice over. Perhaps he could even package Sabo’s severed head in a box, keep it pretty with formaldehyde. Wouldn’t that be a lovely sight?

Sophie looked up in surprise, and Sabo turned with a matching expression. What, were they so focused on each other that their Observation went dead? Hm. Fine. This just meant Sophie’s Haki could do with some training soon, and as a responsible captain, he was honor-bound to help.

Excellent thinking. Next, Law had to come up with a reason why his mouth was so dry.

Beaming at him as if nothing was wrong, she hopped out of Sabo’s chair and picked up her coat and rifle. Law stared back. She couldn’t be this oblivious. It defied human rationality.

“Is everyone ready?” Sophie chirped, passing by him with a little approving pat on his fluffy coat. She smelled like charcoal from the fire, warm and smoky. “Let’s go, Captain.”

Not even a flicker of guilt. Was she doing this on purpose? Couldn’t she tell Sabo’s machinations didn’t only apply to the kingdoms he was overthrowing? Or was she trying to provoke a reaction out of him? _She wouldn’t do that to me._ The grumpily defensive thought pounded in Law’s head, before he could swat it away.

Sophie went out first, without waiting. He heard her shriek as a snowball met her face-first, and then holler threats as she chased after their snickering crew. Picking up his top hat, Sabo paused at the door and looked at the pirate blocking his path. Law wordlessly tapped the handle of Kikoku against Sabo’s chest.

At the very least, he didn’t condescend him by pretending he was clueless. “Sophie’s smart,” Sabo said with an inoffensive shrug.

Yeah. He was preaching to the choir.

“I’d be a fool not to ask her advice when we’re fighting kings and marines and the entire world that she came from. You’d do the same, Trafalgar. I need all the help I can get. Try to remember that she’s doing a good thing, helping. I saw what you did for my brothers in Marineford. I know you can stomach it.”

After a jaw-clenching pause, Law made it clear that the last thing that would’ve affected his decision to help rescue Ace and Luffy in the war was Sabo’s relation to them. In any case: “I won’t stop her if she wants to help you. That’s her prerogative. But—”

_But_. But? The word was a stone in his mouth. He didn’t know what he wanted to say with that. Suddenly, Law felt extremely exasperated at himself. He wasn’t Sophie’s goddamn chaperone. Being a possessive caveman asshole wasn’t his speed. And the fact of the matter was, he _wouldn’t_ be doing this for the rest of the crew, not even for Hai Xing. They were grown-ass adults. If she wanted to have some fun on the side, that was her fucking business. If she wanted to sit on Sabo’s chair, or on Sabo’s desk, or take off all her clothes except for her leather boots, or touch Sabo’s scar as she spread her knees, or—

He was getting a splitting headache. Was he ill?

Sabo appraised him with a strangely thoughtful look in his fucked-up eye. Law tore apart the prickling feeling down the back of his neck and leveled him his flattest, deadest glare, the one that once made Anko whisper if their captain should get exorcised, like, just in case. 

“…It’s interesting,” Sabo said, after a beat. “You act like you’re hers, but you’re not.”

Silence.

“At least, she doesn’t seem to think so. And that’s what matters in the end, really.”

He forced his jaw to unhinge. “That means nothing to me. Your point?”

“I don’t have a point,” Sabo said with a look so politely flabbergasted Law almost respected him for his acting chops. “I’m the second-in-command of an international military. I have wars to fight, dictators to overthrow, democracies to help create. I have better things to do than chase smart girls who yell at me about free elections and the right to protest.”

“Ostensibly.”

After a slow second, Sabo’s eyes hooded. He smiled. “Ostensibly.”

The gaping bloody cut in Law’s chest grew fangs, little horns, a forked tail. 

“If it helps,” he continued in that charming, casual voice, hands held behind his back and spinning his pipe in flashes of silvery-blue metal, “think of Sophie as a temporary, part-time consigliere.”

“You this friendly to all your war councilors?” Law inquired, hating how thin his voice sounded.

“Well,” Sabo said innocently, and a handsome grin curled beneath that writhing burn, his bad eye darkening until it almost matched his good one. “Maybe you’ll get a chance to see how friendly I can be, considering your fondness of voyeurism.”

* * *

That afternoon, Kikoku did a lot of stabbing.

* * *

There was only one bounty head among the bandits they encountered. He’d been promised at least a dozen.

“They’re not all going to show up in one place, Cap,” Penguin pointed out, slinging back a cup of hot mead. “We’ll scout the southern villages. The Army’s info hasn’t been wrong before.” He was clearly confused by the sound of his captain’s grinding jaw.

Logically, Penguin was right. Law had expected something like this to happen—not exactly_ this_, but in the realm of ‘not having his mastermind plans go off perfectly without a hitch’, which never really happened in the first place, anyway. 

When they came back from the hunt and were drying themselves out by the fire, Sabo had beckoned Sophie over to a pile of old maps drawn on animal skin. They were discussing the geography for a land-based assault on the Fensalir king’s stronghold, and she was advising him on what the World Government would do to help defend the city. 

She was still damp from the outing, frost melting on her hair and her furs, her cheeks and nose tinged pink from the chill. “My guess is they’re going to pretend these mountain passes aren’t well-guarded when they definitely are, so if you send your crow whisperer to the north… the freaky-deaky one with probably some kinda fetish, you know?”

“Do I_ know_ Karasu?” Snorting, Sabo reached over and untwisted a stray twig from her hair. “Yeah, we’ve met once or twice.” 

She ran a hand through her disheveled curls. “Oh, thanks.”

Some pine needles fell, and Sabo brushed them off her shoulder. The look he shot Law was a quick, flashing thing of evil, the corner of his rosy, cold-bitten lip crooked up. His bad eye had the fucking audacity to _wink_ at him before it followed his right, looking back at Sophie. “No problem. When did you turn into a wood-sprite?”

“Yes, yes, the dirt and sweat is very glamorous,” she said, smiling dryly at Sabo with the mouth she once fucked Law with.

Koala inserted herself between them, and he assumed that his blood pressure that just shot through the roof had a chance of lowering. But then the orange-haired temptress licked her thumb, grasped Sophie, and scrubbed away a bit of dirt on her cheek. A flustered sound escaped his crewmate. Koala snapped, “At least let her clean herself off before you start being annoying,” at Sabo, and pulled Sophie over to the baths behind the longhouse.

The baths. Ikkaku and Bepo and a few of the others were still in there. He felt himself gruffly relaxing. They were safe. Part of the crew.

Of course. That’s what this was. The reason why he was so antsy watching the revolutionaries interact with Sophie; they weren’t a part of the _crew_. That made perfect sense. (Never mind that all the other officers were interacting perfectly fine with the rest of the Hearts.)

He plotted in his corner like a portent of death, in his all-black fur coat and a black sword dappled with crosses that stood beside him, as tall as a man itself. He could withstand another day of this. Even two, even _three_, if it was just the wily, articulate, blond-haired insurgent with an enthusiasm for chemists who he had to keep an eye on. Law exhaled quietly, satisfied he had come to an unbiased, objective explanation for the nasty curdling feeling in his chest.

The next morning, a raft with paddlewheels and a lone sail appeared beside the Polar Tang. A spot of fire shivered on the coast.

“Shit, it’s cold,” Fire Fist Ace sniffled, shirtless beneath his cloak.

* * *

Fensalir became famously rich, as with just about every other great kingdom, on the backs of its hunters and farmers and laborers. They exported furs that sold at exorbitant prices in other countries, especially the summer ones where a blanket made of soft grey pelt might go for tens of thousands of beli. And the Whitebeard Pirates, bleeding heavily after Edward Newgate’s death and losing territories left and right to Blackbeard, wanted in on the trade.

Ace had been sent by Marco to see if they could barter a deal. The king of Fensalir was historically a strong ally of the World Government, and there’d never been an opportunity for a pirate to slip in and divert some gold for themselves, not even an Emperor. 

Except for now. There was a revolution going on. And a brother to throw some firepower behind.

Which was _great_ for Sabo, and the Revolutionary Army, and Sophie, who got to see a dear friend again, and the Hearts, who were all star-struck by the freckled cowboy/Whitebeard Commander/secret son of Gold Roger, the Pirate King.

It was not so great for Law.

No one needed that many epithets anyway. It was obnoxious.

If he felt a spasm of annoyance when Sabo hugged Sophie, it was full-out _irritation_ when Ace got his hands on her. The fire demon had kicked open the door to a random house with a roaring, “_SABOOOO_,” as villagers screamed. Flames blazing from his body turned the snow around him into a lake. Physically steaming, the moment Ace saw Sabo he tackled him around the middle.

Then, as Sophie come into view, Fire Fist rounded on her. “Curls!”

“Ahhh _you idiot_!” she yelled back. (Law approved.) “Wear a shirt! You’re gonna poke someone’s eyes out!” She jabbed Ace’s nipples for emphasis. (Law would process how he felt about that later.)

Ace decided he would wear something, and that something was the frizzy-haired girl in front of him. He spun her around in a great bear hug, and then purposefully tipped over, right on Sabo, and fell in the snow with his arms still around her. The three of them collapsed in a flurry of white. Sophie shrieked at the cold, which dissolved into muffled laughter as she rolled around with them, trying and failing miserably to get back up with the East Blue boys jostling her in a childish tag-team. The winter morning sunlight tipped the snowy pines around them in golden yellows.

“Doc.” Ace canted his hat at Law, nonchalantly sitting on Sophie’s back as she floundered and kicked snow everywhere. She was splayed belly-down over Sabo’s legs, and pushed herself up on her elbows to lob shittily-made snowballs at them.

Law nodded back. “How’s the wound?” _The_ wound. The wound that Akainu gave him, that one nearly ripped him apart.

He patted the magma-scar on his chest. It was several shades darker than the sun-browned hue of his skin, shiny and wrinkled as new skin laboriously stretched over it. “Healing better every day.”

Shame. “If it gives you any trouble, come to me for a check-up.”

“Is that supposed to sound like a threat?”

“It is.” Face-down, Sophie’s voice was muffled by snow. “He’s very thorough.”

Sabo snorted. Ace eyed Law for a second, and said, “Good to know. Curls, why don’t you ever sing my praises like that?”

“Tell me what you’ve done that’s worth singing about,” she hit back, smooth as butter, almost disdainful. “Being born with constellations on your face doesn’t count. You too, Sabo. Just because you have that pretty thing on your eye doesn’t mean you can settle for being someone’s trophy husband. Ancient chemist proverb.”

Law didn’t glance at Ace or Sabo, but he knew exactly what he would’ve seen. Felt it on his own face whenever Sophie muttered about how lovely his scars were. He didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, and brushed it aside. But she kept saying it, and it became irritating in a way he couldn’t describe. Sometimes it got easier to look in a mirror. He never told her to stop.

Law bent down, lifting a hand from his coat pocket and reaching out. He pressed his fingers right into Ace’s ribcage, inadvertently feeling the hard muscle there—a flash of heat—and pushed the Whitebeard Commander off Sophie. His fingertips singed, the nerves dancing in pain. _Bastard_.

Helping Sophie up, Law dusted off the back of her coat and her shoulders. She glanced at him questioningly. He explained, “Something was on you, but I got it.” 

He pulled Sophie to his side, but then let go quickly and stuffed his hand back in his pocket. As he turned away from the two brothers, he caught a flash of Ace quirking a smile and Sabo looking back at him knowingly; their gazes were almost identical, beneath the shadowed brims of their hats.

* * *

Sophie wasn’t conventionally beautiful.

If you were to see her in a crowded market, you wouldn’t look twice. She didn’t have features that were immediately striking, except maybe for her hair—but what was hair in a world filled with mermaids and sky islanders and giants? Most of the attention might be drawn to her mangled, discolored hands, perhaps her eyes if she was having a particularly twitchy, caffeinated day. Alright-looking, if a bit jittery. Too weird to be truly plain. That would be the extent of the praise.

And then she spoke. Stars burst down from the sky, dead trees bloomed to life, the celestial heavens spun in reverse.

She wrote languages in numbers, elements, secret symbols. The more you looked at her, _really_ looked, you’d start to see every shade of ocean in her eyes. She existed, like everything worthwhile about the world, beyond the boundary of convention and orthodox and fitting into a neat little box. The ugliness of her scars, her sharp tongue, her thighs that pulled with stretch marks were infinite with possibilities, infinite like the universe. It was in Law’s objective, clinical opinion that this creature was shockingly and exquisitely beautiful.

No one else could see it, and the little devil in his chest approved. No one but him.

…Until now.

He saw it in the way Sabo would listen as she talked. The war-planning would go late into the night, and Sabo would draw up battle tactics in countless iterations, accounting for weather, terrain, troops, every minute detail—this was actually interesting, and discussing war with the Chief of Staff, a fellow veteran in the art of blood-shedding, was an entertaining intellectual exercise. Law was here for heart-hunting, not to help their cause, but he offered up his own experience in winter fighting. An alliance went two ways, after all. Besides, if the Army failed, Sophie’d get weepy.

Then she would chime in with her thoughts about the World Government’s war strategies, and Sabo’s head snapped towards her. He’d sit and rest his chin on his palm, his eyes never straying.

Alarm sirens.

It happened later with Ace, too. He was heading out to entreaty the villages around the island on behalf of the Whitebeard Pirates, stuffing on a thick sweater over his head and looking sullen about it. Sophie was fussing around him, tying his cloak tighter around his neck, adjusting his cowboy hat, and clucking at him to bring a warm drink. Standard stuff, really. Remnant worries from Marineford, as if Aokiji was waiting in the distance. Ace watched her with his heavy-lidded eyes, his trademark cocky grin faded away. It was a look Law wasn’t sure that Fire Fist even knew he was making. It wasn’t a smile. It was something—pensive, a little brooding. As if the friendly big-bro pretense he wore slipped off and left something painfully honest in its wake.

More alarm sirens.

…They saw it, didn’t they?

The chilliness inside Law grew. If he sliced his arm open, he wouldn’t be surprised to find ice in his veins instead of blood.

His theory was confirmed when they came back from another hunt, this time loaded with half a dozen hearts. Bandits, done and dealt with. Pleased with the day’s haul (it’d been a _while_ since he’d felt some sense of satisfaction, he’d take this small victory), Law was checking off mental boxes when he went around the longhouse after cleaning all the blood off.

Three blue shadows stretched over the snow, where chickens and goats were roaming as they dug up patches of grass. Voices, talking. Sharp blue coat, dusted with snowflakes. Wolf furs, grey and dark brown. And between them, Sophie’s bright curls. There was something she did whenever she got all nervous or excited; her fingers would tap, or twist around themselves, or she’d tug on some part of her clothes. She did that a lot around him, especially if they were alone. It was a laughably amusing habit. She fidgeted so easily. (For him.)

Presently, she was fidgeting. Sophie leaned her back against the icy wood of the longhouse, icicles glittering around her. She was looking at Ace as he spoke, then said something to Sabo. She was bundled up so heavily she looked like a very round, furry roly-poly, completely shapeless, but he knew her mannerisms in the shift of her feet, the movement beneath her furs as she twisted her fingers. She laughed at something one of the brothers said. Her cheeks and ears were naturally pink from the chill, but when she looked at them like that… when she _smiled_…

Law found himself flexing and clenching his hand repeatedly. Nearby, a thin goat butted its head against his leg. He distractedly patted it and strode forward.

Sabo caught his eye first, and he adopted a look of polite cheer as he waved. “We were just telling Sophie about the possible bandit hideouts in the mountains.”

“Saw one on my way back from the villages,” Ace added. “Could’ve burnt them then, but figured I should leave them for you.”

Law made a mental note, appreciating it. Didn’t mean he actually had to say that part _out loud_, though. After a methodical pause, he drawled, “I’ll scope it out tomorrow. Forgive me if I don’t immediately trust the advice of two pretty boys born into royalty.”

Their expressions darkened, and internally the little devil rubbed his hands together.

“I left that life behind me,” Sabo retorted.

“I have nothing to do with Roger,” Ace snapped.

“Oh, Captain.” Sophie yanked the sleeve of his coat, smiling sweetly. “Ahem. _Come here_.” They both turned around, and her façade dropped. She looked at him like he was a complete idiot and reminded, “Both your parents were wildly successful doctors and you had a private school education.”

He leaned in. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

“Ace and Sabo grew up in a jungle,” she said in an undertone. “Take it easy.” She gave him a once-over, frowning a bit. Her lips were dry and chapped from the cold. It was very tempting to warm them up, to bite them gently until they reddened with color. He could find some excuse. Hazards of frozen extremities. Hypothermia was dangerous. “Why are you so tense?”

Law straightened, his expression betraying nothing.

Behind them, Sabo was saying, “And for the record, I was a _noble_. I wasn’t _royal_. There’s a difference, okay?”

“I never even met my dad,” Ace continued, the snow around him steaming, “I didn’t even take his name.”

“They’ll get over it. Come on.” Before she had time to reconsider, he was taking her hand and leading her inside the longhouse. The officers were going about their business, and the Hearts were regaling a few of them with the day’s adventure fighting bandits. Law found the room his crew was given, which was crammed with fur blankets and its own fire pit that was lit with small crackling flames. He couldn’t feel it; he was ice-cold.

Sophie blinked at him in a fidgeting daze, and he made a split-second decision to lock the door with a clear _snap_ when he could’ve slid it shut silently, just to watch her jump. This was hypothetically very bad. No, not hypothetically. He deserved a bullet in the foot or worse. (He usually deserved worse.) 

There was no reason to lock the door. This wasn’t some kind of jealousy-driven fairytale. He wasn’t going to round on her like a deranged madman, push all of her clothes off, and lay her down on the softest area of the floor. He wasn’t going to glide his hands up and down her thighs, or devour every inch of her until her warmth drained down into his frozen bones, or murmur in her ear to moan his name right by the wall where he knew Ace and Sabo were standing outside. She’d probably stammer it incomprehensibly, anyway. But that’d make it more genuine. Maybe she’d even scream it, delirious and pink and smitten with her despicable captain, who spread her legs not because he could give her anything of value, but because he couldn’t stand her looking at anyone else like the way she looked at him. What a piece of shit.

Well. It wasn’t going to happen. The angry, miserable hollow in him dragged all of his awakened demons back into the shadows, and demanded he get his shit together. Law knew well enough to listen. The fog in his brain was thankfully not so intense that he missed her look of confusion. He cleared his throat—that did nothing to help the lump in it—and rasped out, “You’re covered in mud.”

“Oh,” she said quickly. “Oh, right.”

The room was thankfully empty, so he had no excuse to _not_ watch Sophie peel away the dirt-covered coat she wore. She examined the holes at the bottom of her coat—a gift from several well-aimed arrows—and pursed her lips in a frown. Dropping the coat on a wooden chair, she hugged her arms and moved closer to the fire.

She hardly got a foot closer before he was opening his long, fuzzy coat and pulling her into him, wrapping the outer layer around her so they were both bundled up in his mostly-clean coat in the silliest way imaginable. Law felt rather stupid, but he also felt grumpy, and it was the irritating grumpy _melty_ feeling that won out when she craned her neck back so she could blink up at him.

“You were shivering,” he said, as though he wasn’t making up excuses on the spot, and cracked a small grin. “Bepo isn’t here, so you have to make do with me.”

It was worth it to see her flush. “I suppose you make a decent substitute,” she mumbled, and Law knew with nasty, scum-of-the-earth satisfaction that her abrupt demureness was her struggling to control herself, to resist the urge to do terrible things to him, his dick, and by extension her dignity. For a moment, things felt normal again. He was back to being the center of her attention.

Sophie let out a tiny, restrained breath. And then she shoved her freezing hands up his shirt.

Should’ve seen that coming.

* * *

There was a celebration that night, because Sabo’s troops wanted to give a proper welcome to their Chief of Staff’s brother. The Hearts, by virtue of their proximity and love for good food and ale, were invited as well.

They gathered inside the longhouse after a busy day, stamping snow from their feet and warming themselves up by the fire. The cooks prepared fish and picked meat and vegetables as the rest milled around, cleaning weapons and wounds. Ace went from drying himself off on fur blankets, to rolling around on Bepo, to flopping over Sophie and investigating what she was doing. She was so focused on her gun maintenance she hardly noticed her new leech.

The fire pit crackled behind their backs, drying all the cloaks hung over the flames. Fensalir’s troubles were briefly forgotten as he enchanted everyone with stories, and hands were always at the ready to refresh his pint of hot cider. Pirate and revolutionary crowded around him, eager to hear what the Whitebeards were up to, how the Phoenix was handling being the new captain, if they should be on the lookout for any wars with the Blackbeard Pirates on the horizon. Koala was excitedly drawing up new plans for tomorrow’s skirmish, pushing aside troops on the map to make room for Fire Fist Ace. The moon rose high in the wintery sky, and soon people were nodding off thanks to the strong ale and the warmth insulated by woven fabrics covering the walls.

The magma-scar on his chest had healing nicely, so Law could pretend he was simply observing Ace’s wound instead of his expanse of rippling muscle. He was built like a sledgehammer. So many prominent veins, easy to slice open. Nice jugular.

Sweating from the fire, Sophie was pulling off the top of her boiler suit. Which meant attempting to extricate herself from under Ace’s arm. Which meant cursing at him as he kept slipping his free arm around her shoulders like a nuisance, while his other put away another pint in one gulp. Once she tied the sleeves around her waist, she stuck the barrel of her gun beneath his chin, which only made Ace grin wider. “You’re hot.”

“Thanks for noticing. Took you a damn minute, Curls.”

“Your brother is a terror,” she informed Sabo. “If you want me to make you amnesic about him again, I’ll do it for free.”

Color rose in his normally composed face, and Sabo flicked her on the nose. Ace bent his elbow around Sophie’s neck as she cackled, catching her in a headlock that wasn’t really a headlock, judging by how the real objective was to pull her between his legs like a big, cuddly dog. The Hearts embraced platonic skinship and regularly slept piled on top of each other. This was known as the Bepo Effect. _It’s nothing serious_, Law thought, though his back was tensed like a steel rod. Like penguins. Huddling together. It was fine.

Sabo wasn’t outwardly, blatantly… _handsy_. He was a bit like Law, shrewd, self-aware, his interactions with Sophie smothered by justifiable touches; that was something he could handle. But Fire Fist was different. He swaggered through life with no sense of physical boundaries, and somehow people fell for that bullshit puppy-in-human-form shtick. Never mind that he’d earned a reputation of burning entire Marine fleets to ashes, dusting off his hat, and whistling as he looted gold from the wreckage. A goddamned D, just like Law, which meant Ace was also a storm-bringer, and maybe also secretly passive-aggressive as fuck.

“Oh, too soon? Oops. Sorry. Ehehe.” Sophie went along with it with nasty giggles, fully prepared for her untimely demise. Until Sabo caught her leg, the back of her calf, and maybe she mistook that as a threat to pinch because she huffed quickly, “Hey, I said _sorry_.”

Sabo didn’t move his hand. He looked at his brother with a little disappointed _tsk_. “Careful, you’ll get ex-marine all over yourself.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Ace wondered in her ear. “’Cause he makes it sound so nice.”

Sabo rested his elbows on top of her knees. “These Hexheads are cursed, Ace. No real bones. Break her open and bats come flying out.” 

“Makes sense,” Ace agreed. “All this wiggling.”

Hands moved. Sophie startled into a pink flush, and it might’ve just been due to something harmless like the heat and a humorous remark—or something that Law couldn’t see past Sabo’s shoulders. Stifled chuckles. Whispers. She might’ve been suffocated by them, leaning back against Ace’s chest with her knees crooked up, her feet jabbing with merciless affection at Sabo. Hands on legs on ankles; fair, tanned, and burned hands that Law’s narrowed eyes were watching over a snoring Bepo.

He wasn’t going to be irritated. He wasn’t going to be anything. He was going to drink the rest of this piss-flavored mead and stumble to an empty room and glare at the ceiling until the light dawned and he crankily assented to enduring another day.

“I won’t take that from a former noble,” Sophie retorted, lightly kicking Sabo.

“I wouldn’t either,” he shot back, clearly enjoying her response. “Between me and Ace, who pisses you off the most?”

“Easy answer,” Ace snickered.

“You can say it’s me,” Sabo said with an encouraging smile. “You can say I irritate you so much I live in your head rent-free.”

Ace’s smile fell. “Oi, that’s dirty.” He tilted her chin with his thumb, and said seriously, “Hey. Just because I haven’t tried to kill you doesn’t mean I ain’t fond of you.”

She huffed, blowing strands of hair out of her face. Her weirdly thick eyebrows scrunched together. “Excuse me. I _know_ you two aren’t this horrible to other people. Why am I the constant exception to being terrorized?”

They merely grinned back at her. If Law thought about it practically, it was unfair that she liked a captain with an unrelenting stone heart. He couldn’t blame her for wanting to warm herself up, especially not in a country as cold as this one. If he saw her the next morning quickly combing down her hair, with bruises and scratches on her waist where two hands would’ve gripped her, that’d be—it’d be—

It’d be _fine_. 

This was too bothersome to care about. Which he fucking didn’t. Care, that is. The more he allowed space in his thoughts for it, the more it wound around him like golden legs wrapping themselves shyly on his hips. He was going to get up now. He was going to leave for the sake of his own embattled sanity. Law sat in place, gazing at the fire. Sweat beaded down the back of his neck, slipping down his shirt. What the hell was wrong with him?

“Bet you missed us,” Ace said to Sophie, tucking his small grin against her shoulder. And then his dark eyes flicked up, glimmering obsidian at Law, and his teeth flashed between the wavy black hair falling across his face. His voice roughened as he said, “Doc, you think she missed us?”

Shirtless, sun-tanned, more slum rat than Pirate King. His tattooed arm was red with firelight, the muscled one that was curled over Sophie’s stomach, glistening with a hypnotic sheen of sweat. Sabo looked over his shoulder, and the burned muscle of his face seemed to smile at Law, warped and wicked and too fucking pretty, with his hand tracing the curvature of Sophie’s foot.

There was an indent in the metal cup where Law was gripping it. The headache pounding behind his eyes was becoming unbearable.

It worsened when Sophie met his gaze over Sabo’s shoulder, and realized he’d been watching them the whole time. The flush on her cheeks darkened to red, the same color as her lip where she’d been biting it to hold in her laughter. For a strange, inexplicable moment, she looked at him like…

Then panic entered her eyes and she squirmed, which was quite possibly the worst fucking thing to do in her position, and it had to be for the express purpose of tormenting Law until he ground his molars into dust. 

Sophie quickly tried to return to some semblance of modesty. The hand she rested (accidentally?) on Ace’s thigh lifted up so she could elbow him away. The knee that that Sabo was absently touching hit him in the chest. They let go at once and settled back on the floor, the peculiar tension in the air broken. Grumping at them, she scooted away and became stubbornly fixated on counting her bullets.

But Law hadn’t waited for the show to end; he stood up, and was now standing outside in the snow before he was even fully aware of it. 

He had walked and walked until his back forgot the heat of the longhouse, and around him was an endless stretch of snow-capped fir trees. The full moon lit the forest in shades of dark blue, which was a welcome reprieve from the firelight glowing over loose hair, reds and oranges warming flushed skin. 

He stood there ankle-deep snow in a stiff, still line, breath coming out in quick, hard fog. He had left so abruptly he forgot his coat, but it turned out he didn’t need it. His nose and ears were red and aching from the cold, and yet somehow it felt like he was melting. Shit, he was so fucking hot. 

Raising his head to the sky, he inhaled as hard as he could. Law stayed that way for several minutes, trying to empty his mind, trying to think of nothing. His heart thumped brutally.

And then he bent down with a muffled _snarl_ as he dug his hands into his face, eyes squeezed shut. It didn’t fucking help. He still saw Sabo’s crooked grin, Ace’s bare shoulders with his tattoo crawling down one bicep, Sophie holding his gaze while doing nothing to remove the broad hands searching her body. Had her hips rolled slightly, or did he dream that? When she stared at him, wedged between two other men, had her mouth parted as if to invite him in again? He still saw their individual wretched burn-scars, all that moribund flesh, jagged and charred and unsmooth like destroyed velvet. His crotch throbbed.

The winter wind was sharp and biting in his lungs, and Law stayed outside until it finally, finally cooled the molten-hot embers in his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ‘love square’ dynamic where character b thinks she’s in one-sided love with character a, reunites with characters c and d who’ve grown quite fond of her, while character a gets so annoyed at b, c, and d for frustrating the hell out of him he accidentally gets himself hard.


End file.
